Call for Papers: A Sociolinguistics of Islam: Exploring Multilingualism & Meaning in Faith

The Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development announces a call for papers for a special issue on “A Sociolinguistics of Islam: Exploring Multilingualism & Meaning in Faith”.

Across the fields of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, literacy studies, and linguistic anthropology, the role of religion has been present yet marginalised, and often subsumed under broader categories such as ‘identity’, ‘ideology’, or ‘cultural practice’. Despite this presence, scholarship within linguistic and cultural studies, broadly speaking, has not fully capitalised on the onto-epistemic
potential of how language and society intersect in contexts where the Islamic faith serves as a defining worldview. Engaging more deeply with such contexts offers valuable opportunities to advance research on religious multilingual and multicultural development, particularly when grounded in Islamic historicity, theology, and the distinctive features of Islamic knowledge traditions.

This special issue seeks to redress this imbalance by exploring a ‘sociolinguistics of Islam’, a conceptual and empirical orientation, as defined by Bhatt, Barnawi and Ahmad (2025), that foregrounds contexts of linguistic practice shaped by Islamic traditions, whether in Muslim-majority or Muslim-minority settings, as deserving of dedicated scholarly attention. The sociolinguistics of Islam refers to the exploration of how language and society intersect within contexts where the Islamic faith is a defining worldview shaping language, literacy, and other processes of semiosis. Building on foundational work in the ‘sociology of language and religion’ (e.g. Fishman 2006; Omoniyi 2010), and drawing inspiration from sociolinguistic analyses in religious communities (e.g. Spolsky 2014; Shandler 2006; Fishman et al. 1966), this special issue invites critical, theoretical, and empirical contributions that advance the study of language within Islamic sociolinguistic ecologies.

In this respect, we are particularly interested in contributions that address the following themes:

• Sociolinguistic perspectives on Muslimness and language, identity, and belonging in Muslim communities;
• Religious multilingualism, language shift, and the vernacularisation of Islamic discourse;
• Heritage literacy and scriptural practices in everyday communication and/or education;
• Quranic influences on phonology and lexicon across languages and contexts, or other historical-sociolinguistic points of focus;
• Semiotic ideologies surrounding Islamic auditory and visual cultures, including art and performance;

Proposed timeline

• 22nd August 2025 – Deadline for extended abstracts (700-800 words), submitted via this form: https://forms.office.com/e/QPNYwfqWEp
• 7th September 2025 – Notification of abstract acceptance and invitation to submit full manuscripts
• 23rd December 2025 – Deadline for full manuscripts (submitted through JMMD online submission system)

• 30th March 2026 – Final submission of revised articles
• Accepted articles are immediately published as Online First