NEGOTIATING LINGUISTIC AND RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY: A TAMIL HINDU TEMPLE IN AUSTRALIA. OXON, UK: ROUTLEDGE – International Journal of Social Sciences and Management Review

NEGOTIATING LINGUISTIC AND RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY: A TAMIL HINDU TEMPLE IN AUSTRALIA. OXON, UK: ROUTLEDGE

Author: Kulam Shanmugam

ABSTRACT

In this article, Perera’s book titled “Negotiating Linguistic and Religious Diversity: A Tamil Hindu Temple in Australia” is reviewed. In this book Perera presents the Tamil temple with the pseudonym ‘Saiva Temple’ in a case study format and demonstrates the ways in which an immigrant religious institution is undergoing linguistic and religious changes and transformation. This is a study of how this temple deals with addressing challenges related to religious super-diversity. Perera’s PhD thesis, on which this book is based, received the 2018 Australian Linguistics Society/Applied Linguistics Association Michael Clyne prize for the best thesis on immigrant bilingualism and language contact.

Keywords: Tamil language; Diaspora; Hindu temple; Australia; Diversity

References

Peterson (1989). Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Leonard, K. (2006). “South Asian religions in the United States: New contexts and configurations”In Rajan, G., & Sharma, S. (2006). New cosmopolitanisms: South Asians in the US. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.p.91-114.
Hornabrook, J. (2016). ‘Becoming One Again’: Music and Transnationalism in London’s Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora (Doctoral dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London).