“Their Yoruba Was Pure. It Was Archaic, It Was Native”: Racioreligious Linguistic Ideologies in (Re)constructing Ritual, Language and Identity

Abstract

This research proposes racioreligious linguistic ideologies to conceptualize systems of belief that conflate categories of language, spirituality, and peoplehood, with implications for contemporary education. While theories on the semiotics of race (raciosemiotics) and on the interplay of language and race (raciolinguistics) are positioned well to understand how multiple identities co-craft personhood, they have not been regularly applied in exploring religion’s role (alongside language and race) in identity co-construction. This article presents the case of Yoruba language education in the Brazilian city of Salvador to explore its grounding in the semiotic values that language practices have acquired within racioreligious linguistic ideologies. I examine the positioning of Yoruba in ethnographic interviews with three lifelong students who practice African-matrix cosmologies of ancestral devotion and seek a “pure” form of Yoruba. These data highlight how people in this location of the African diaspora are (re)constructing identity, ritual, and ancestral linguistic practices through language education.

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