Apply Now 
This talk explores the concept of heritage literacy through a study of Muslim communities in Mainland China and Hong Kong SAR. The research is grounded in the fields of literacy studies, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, and utilizes data gathered using comprehensive ethnographic procedures.
The study finds that a range of heritage literacy practices that occur in various community spaces and homes, are characteristically translingual and transmodal, and interconnect with Islamo-Arabic practices in ways that may diverge from classical forms. Further, the ways that people adopt or adapt religious heritage marks this practice as something that evolves and a way to resource heritage futures.
This research argues that the construct of heritage is not a generic outcome of ‘heritage language’ or ‘heritage education’, but stems from the specific literacy practices embedded within particular material and multi-voiced discursive arrangements. Drawing on these key dimensions, it provides a theoretical framework for the study of heritage literacy and argues for the value of heritage literacy inquiry in multilingual and multicultural contexts as part of a broader ‘sociolinguistics of Islam’.
