LANGUAGE STRUCTURING OF RELIGIOUS AWARENESS: A LEXICOGRAPHIC APPROACH

We take a semiotic approach to studying religion in order to assess how basic English conveys the structure of the institution of religion and provides the lay public with knowledge about religious identities. Our data consist of definitions of religious identities provided by two dictionaries. The identities we consider are from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions. From the dictionary definitions, we created a semantic network showing how the meaning of one identity is elucidated by references to other identities. The network can be interpreted as roughly mapping the institutional layout of religion. Identities in the network partition into clusters corresponding to the major faiths, and status hierarchies of some institutional structures like abbeys are evident within faiths. A few bridging identities link different faiths, so the overall structure is loosely connected apart from a few semantic isolates. Our results suggest that basic English biases its speakers' awareness overwhelmingly toward Christian identities, provides meager knowledge regarding Judaism, and offers limited and sometimes eccentric views of other major faiths.