Learning Sanskrit as a sacred language in the West:A narrative study

Aims and objectives: This exploratory study investigates experiences and perceptions of Sanskrit language learning in Western non-heritage learners by analysing their language learning narratives. Methodology: Sanskrit language learning narratives were elicited through unstructured interviews. Data and analysis: Four Italian adults at a Sanskrit language Saturday class in Italy volunteered to participate: The teacher and three students, all yoga practitioners. Narratives were analysed using a combination of structured, thematic, and discursive approaches based on Riesman’s dialogic/ performance approach. Findings: Sanskrit appears to be a sacred language to these learners, as it is the language of ancient philosophical or spiritual texts, and its sound has special effects on the mind and body. They learn Sanskrit to access texts in the original language and appear to have internalised Sanskritic views of perfection of the sounds of Sanskrit, their effects, and the joy of Sanskrit. Their approach to learning Sanskrit is at the interface of Western and Sanskritic traditions, as they embrace Western grammar translation and Sanskritic teacher-disciple oral transmission and ignore the Western communicative approach and Sanskritic rote memorisation. Originality: This is the first investigation of Sanskrit learning in non-heritage Western settings and one of the first to investigate the learning of a sacred language. Yoga practitioners are a hitherto unexplored population in language learning research. A narrative approach facilitates the exploration of participants’ meaning-making and understanding. Significance: The study contributes to the emerging field of research on the learning of sacred languages, revealing some similarities and differences between learners of Sanskrit and other sacred languages. It shows that narratives provide suitable data for researching sacred language learning

Identity construction and perception of violence by female residents of a domestic violence shelter

This research examines the narratives of three women temporarily living in a shelter for women fleeing domestic violence in the UK. It explores how they construct their identities and perceive violence, how broader narratives influence their perceptions and identity construction, and how these broader narratives are interwoven and represented in their stories. It is an interdisciplinary study drawing on domestic violence, sociolinguistics, sociology, narrative and literary theories. This interpretive study combines a narrative approach with elements of ethnography. Through in-depth analysis, it investigates the structural and thematic content of the narratives, the linguistic and discursive strategies used by the women, the different contextual aspects of the narratives and the relationships between time, space and people. Stories were elicited through unstructured interviews. Several findings emerge in relation to the women’s narratives. First, coercive control was consistently indexed in their stories through the use of linguistic strategies and discursive markers. Forms of emotional and mental abuse appear in their stories as more damaging to their sense of self and autonomy than, for instance, physical violence. Second, the women represent themselves not as victims but as thinking, acting and reacting people in response to the circumstances at hand. The identity of the victim appears as a ‘retrospective evaluative, ascribed identity’ (Blommaert 2005, p. 206). Third, their personal and meaningful possessions spoken about in their narratives served as a strong indexical of identity representations, and the destruction or disposal of such possessions by their abusive partners represented a violation of the self and of their identity ownership. Together these findings illustrate how narratives help us to understand better the agency women bring to their lives. Violence and abuse, especially in the form of coercive control, appear in the analysis as an attack on the women’s identity and a hindrance to their identity construction, corroborating earlier studies