The Oxford Handbook of Ritual Language

Abstract

This volume offers a collection of innovative chapters that address foundational questions regarding the scope, structuring, deployment, and consequences of ritual language. These works also plumb the relationship between speakers’ consciousness and verbal ritual performances and among ritual language, hegemony, collective authority, and the social world. As a vibrant survey of both traditional inquiries and recent research about the intersection of speech and ritual, this handbook discusses theoretical and methodological approaches that reflect on classical works and recent contributions to ritual speech. Since the analysis of ritual speech hinges on extensive analyses of linguistic choices and styles, this volume’s chapters examine ritual speech from a diversity of language groups and societies in the Americas, the Middle East, the Pacific, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean.