The pragmatics of reading prayers: Learning the Act of Contrition in Spanish-based religious education classes (doctrina)
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Patricia Baquedano-López
Abstract
In this article I investigate the convergence of a number of linguistic, interactional, and textual resources employed in religious reading activities in Spanish-based Catholic religious instruction (doctrina) for school-age Mexican immigrant children. I examine the use of these resources through an analysis of the reading and memorization of the Act of Contrition (AOC), a prayer said during the religious ritual that involves the confession and absolution of sins. I discuss examples of a classroom reading activity that centers on the interactions of four female students and their teacher as they read the AOC. The analysis of their interactions illustrates the ways in which their collaborative reading engages a ritualization process that focuses and constructs text as sacred. The reading activity supported this ritualization process through (i) parallel reframing and interpretation of the words being read and (ii) verbalizations of cognitive activity related to ways of reading text. I also discuss how the activities of ritualization socialize attention to both text and other participants in the activity. Descriptions of doctrina instruction and the origins of the AOC are also provided.
© 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: The eidos of reading and the socio-religious ethos
- Introduction
- Deixis, taqiyya, and textual mediation in crypto-Muslim Aragon
- The pragmatics of reading prayers: Learning the Act of Contrition in Spanish-based religious education classes (doctrina)
- The Talmud as a fat Rabbi: A novel approach
- Reading Jewish signs: The socialization of multilingual literacies among Hasidic women and girls in Brooklyn, New York
- Body, text, and talk in Maroua Fulbe Qur'anic schooling
- Reading and meditation in the Middle Ages: Lectio divina and books of hours
- Afterword: Reading without spirit?
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: The eidos of reading and the socio-religious ethos
- Introduction
- Deixis, taqiyya, and textual mediation in crypto-Muslim Aragon
- The pragmatics of reading prayers: Learning the Act of Contrition in Spanish-based religious education classes (doctrina)
- The Talmud as a fat Rabbi: A novel approach
- Reading Jewish signs: The socialization of multilingual literacies among Hasidic women and girls in Brooklyn, New York
- Body, text, and talk in Maroua Fulbe Qur'anic schooling
- Reading and meditation in the Middle Ages: Lectio divina and books of hours
- Afterword: Reading without spirit?
