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Abstract

Religion is an important but understudied domain of language policy. Inspired by the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, an influential theoretician in the comparative study of religion, this article aims to advance research on the religious domain by mapping out two contrasting ‘topographies’ and their attendant language policies. A topography is a religious orientation that emphasizes fixity, sacrality, hierarchy, and purity, while a (“no-place”) typography valorizes freedom, movement, interconnection, and the transcendence of boundaries. The Russian Orthodox maintenance of Church Slavonic and Catholic support for Esperanto serve as respective examples, with the continuance of Latin in Catholicism presenting a mixed case. The article suggests that the locative-utopian distinction can also shed light on secular policies, such as the Russian government’s entrenchment of the Cyrillic alphabet and the widespread use of the Frutiger typeface in major world airports.

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2026-04-21
2026-05-11

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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: sacred language ; lingua franca ; religion ; linguistic landscape ; Christianity

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