Abstract
In this paper, we illustrate how young children from four faith communities (Tamil Hindu/Saiva, Bangladeshi Muslim, Polish Catholic and Ghanaian Pentecostal) new to London bring together and juxtapose an array of different languages, literacies, learning and discourse styles, communicative resources and experience to create unique personal narratives. We draw on the concepts of syncretism and syncretic literacy to examine and interpret the creative and transformative processes in which children engage, and to show how children combine and ultimately make sense of faith and everyday experiences.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (Wittgenstein, 1961: 5.6) Cinderella and Krishna wanted to go to a beach –ch in night, then, then, then um, um, um Pillaiyar <Lord Ganesh> said let’s go tomorrow morning, it’s gonna be so fun, in night there might be so many people, dangerous people, might, might hit us! … then she went to the beach … then she put a tent, -ent … then Krishna made the kitchen –en to cook and eat, eat, and then finally a some people lived in their house … Krishna said to the people that’s who that the, the good people to “you can sleep um in my house and this is not my real house, so you could actually sleep on there”. (Tanja, aged 7, video-recording 21 September 2011)
As Tanja weaves together the different threads of her story, she draws not only upon different cultures and story traditions, but on the history of generations of worshippers of her religion, the ways of living, values and knowledge from her family’s Hindu/Saiva faith. To these, she adds her knowledge of school language, stories and experience in the shape of Cinderella, retold in English. The result expresses her unique personal interpretation and understanding of different aspects of her life. This paper proposes syncretism as a creative act of mind in interpreting ways in which Tanja and other children in multilingual London make sense of narratives from their different worlds. Narratives as understood in this paper include not just language and story events, but music, dance, play and most ways of making personal sense of events in our different worlds and lives. Thus, mind, culture and narrative are viewed as intimately linked.
Faith practices offer children the opportunity to extend the limits of both their language and their world. This is especially so for children whose faith practices rely on languages different from the official language of the mainstream society in which they live. This paper illustrates how children actively combine, create and recreate different narratives, using different languages and different cultural traditions. We refer to this as syncretic acts, whereby children’s worlds are enriched through a variety of contrasting yet complementary experiences that they manage to understand in their own individual ways. The paper argues for syncretism to be interpreted as a verb. As children actively syncretize languages, narratives, art or dance forms or, indeed, rituals and experiences, they creatively step outside existing boundaries and learn to think ‘outside the box’. The definition we propose thus encompasses the notion of syncretism as representing a diverse treasure trove, an array of linguistic, artistic, social and cultural resources from which children can draw.
In this paper, we show how young children, new to London, from four faith communities syncretize languages, literacies, learning, discourse styles and experiences to create something that is greater than the sum of the constituent parts. We argue that, similar to Vygotsky’s (1978) example of sociodramatic play, this new energy enables them to be a head taller than in any one of their separate worlds. In the sections below, we first offer a brief definition of how we interpret syncretism, with particular reference to the role of literacy learning. Our second section explains the context and nature of the study and the methodology used to collect and analyse data. In the third part, we present examples of the ways in which four children syncretize languages and literacies from everyday and faith narratives. Finally, we show how the theoretical lens of syncretism contributes to our understanding of language and literacy events in cross-cultural contexts and argue that it provides a valuable framework within which to situate complex faith practices.
Definitions of syncretism
Syncretism as a fusion of traditions, beliefs and practices
‘It was the practice of the Cretans who, though they quarrelled with each other, made up and united when outside enemies attacked and this it was that they called “syncretism” (sun-kretismos)’ (Plutarch, trans. 1939: 313). The paradox of difference or conflict embedded within unity against a common enemy, as the quote by Plutarch suggests, symbolizes the complexity of meaning contained in this term. ‘Syncretism’ has variously been understood to be a positive or a negative phenomenon, as the creativity resulting from the reconciliation of difference or as simply a juxtaposition or mixing together of different contrasting elements. It has been used more widely in studies on religion than in education or literacy learning. In the former context, religious syncretism generally describes and analyses the combining of two or more belief systems or the incorporation of beliefs or practices from unrelated traditions, e.g. the bringing together of Catholic traditions with traditional African singing and praying in Central and South America (Leopold and Jensen, 2005) As such, syncretism has sometimes been regarded as a positive and creative phenomenon (Das, 2003), or as a negative force when seen as the result of slavery and colonial power (Stewart and Shaw, 1994). Our focus in this paper adheres to the notion of interpreting syncretism as the former of these two: transformation through creativity within a deep-seated unity of expression, talents or skills.
Syncretism and language and literacy learning
Syncretism used as a theoretical framework to analyse language and literacy learning has been relatively recent. However, cultural and linguistic anthropologists have long documented the ways in which young children actively syncretize languages, literacy practices and learning styles without actually using the term itself. These examples often show how children’s religious practices reach out into their everyday home activities. One of the earliest influential studies providing a finely tuned analysis of how this takes place is Heath’s (1983) Ways with Words, a longitudinal study over 10 years in a rural area in the American Appalachians. Heath does not use the term ‘syncretism’ in her analyses, but her examples of children from both Trackton (black working-class) and Roadville (white working-class) communities show clearly the bringing together of items of vocabulary, narratives, songs and interaction patterns between the church and everyday activities. For example, in response to singing in church, two-year-old Lem from the Trackton community produces story-poems with his aunt in which he uses different elements from religious language (e.g. rhyming, repetition), Christian discourse and genres (e.g. ‘question–answer’ sequences) that he hears every week in church: 1 Way 2 Far 3 Now 4 It a church bell 5 Ringin’ 6 Dey singing 7 Ringin’ 8 You hear it? 9 I hear it 10 Far 11 Now (Heath, 1983: 170)
In the Roadville (white working-class) community, there was a similar bringing together of teaching methods as well as narratives and songs from homes and the fundamentalist Protestant church. Although the children were not encouraged to confuse real-life narratives with Bible stories but rather to recite the latter exactly from memory, Biblical parables and so on were taken over in stories about everyday life – where often a story fitted into and triggered an appropriate moral, for example ‘A rollin’ stone gathers no moss’. In this way, children syncretized Bible parables and proverbs into their everyday oral stories, enriching them and infusing them with deeper meaning rooted in Christian discourse and morality.
A decade later, Duranti and Ochs (1996) first introduced syncretic literacy as a framework to analyse how diverse cultural practices inform the organization of literacy activities in multilingual households. Collaborating with others at the Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning in Santa Cruz, California, they worked with multilingual households to show how language can be viewed as a set of practices involving ways of interpreting the world. In such families, cultural threads from diverse sources are interwoven into a single interactional fabric and enacted in daily routines where: an intermingling or merging of culturally diverse traditions informs and organises literacy activities… syncretism may include incorporation of any culturally diverse values, beliefs, emotions, practices, identities, institutions, tools and other material resources into the organisation of literacy activities. (Duranti and Ochs, 1996: 2)
Using the example of a Samoan American church, Duranti et al. (1995) show how an important practice (learning the alphabet from a picture chart, the Pi Tautau) is transformed as it makes its way from Samoa to the USA. In Samoa, the chart teaches the written alphabet to children fluent in spoken Samoan but unfamiliar with the Western objects in the pictures; in the USA, the chart teaches spoken Samoan to children who are already literate in English and familiar with the objects represented but unable to speak Samoan. From this, they argue that any study of migrant children’s home literacy practices can only be made with reference to the historical context of what counts ‘back home’.
Both Heath (1983) and Duranti and Ochs (1996) make valuable contributions to what have become known as Syncretic Literacy Studies (Gregory et al., 2004) at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Ethnographic and often longitudinal studies conducted by researchers from both the UK and the USA have contributed to the syncretic literacy framework proposed by Duranti and Ochs (1996) and have extended it to reveal the creativity stemming from children and their families inventing combinations of different forms, narratives and practices. Early literacy ‘lessons’ for Bangladeshi British siblings in London take up and examine the notion of patterning revealed by Heath (1983) with Lem in Trackton (Gregory, 1998, 2008; Rashid and Gregory, 1997). These reading sessions show how children syncretize the interaction patterns of the Qur’anic class (listen and repeat) when using English texts but omit the test, thus retaining the more relaxed approach of the English classroom. Other work with siblings shows that children as young as four are able to ‘teach’ younger children at home using ‘school English’ (Drury, 2007). The siblings in the UK chose to conduct their sessions in English, while those in the USA (Volk and de Acosta, 2004) show how Spanish and English might both contribute to the tapestry of literacy learning. In the episode below, five-year-old Julializ is helped by her six-year-old sister to analyse English words by using Spanish sounds: 1 Zoila: La O (ō) es U (ōō). [The O is U.] 2 Julializ: To. Go. 3 Zoila: P.A. (ā) / / P. / / 4 Julializ: / / P / / lay. 5 Zoila: La O (ō) es. A (o˘). [The O is A.] 6 Julializ: Nnnn ot. Not. 7 Zoila: U (uˇ). I-U (I˘-uˇ). Ruuuuuun. 8 Julializ: Run. 9 Zoila: Oo (oo). Llook. 10 Julializ: Look… (Volk and de Acosta, 2004: 35)
It is not just siblings who are able to syncretize heritage and Western teaching styles, languages, texts and narratives in such creative ways. Further examples show how peers (Chen and Gregory, 2004; Kenner, 2004), grandmothers (Gregory et al., 2007, 2010) and complementary language teachers (Robertson, 2004) all set about ‘teaching’ in similarly inventive ways and how their teaching styles are often informed by faith or complementary school lessons.
It is clear from the examples above that faith plays an important role in offering children new narratives, often expressed in a different language and drawing on different communicative resources, performed through different rituals with different artefacts and using different interaction patterns from an everyday home context (Gregory et al., 2013). Faith activities may well be the only other formal learning a child encounters outside school. They are regular, often extended and penetrate deeply into children’s everyday lives. Yet, we still know very little about their scope, depth and content, nor about the ways in which children and their families or friends syncretize faith with other activities in their daily lives. The following examples invite readers into the lives of four children and their friends and families and show the ways in which children syncretize faith learning with their everyday world.
The study: Context, data and analyses
The excerpts presented in this paper form part of a corpus of data collected during an ethnographic study entitled ‘Becoming literate through faith: Language and literacy learning in the lives of new Londoners’ and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (2009–2013). The study is taking place in London, one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world. Within this context are our four faith communities: a Bangladeshi Muslim, Tamil Hindu/Saiva and Ghanaian Pentecostal community in East London and a Polish Catholic community in Southeast London. Four researchers, each working alongside a project co-director, represent the communities and their membership. However, not all are members of the faith with which they work. Hence our team comprises both ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ who are interpreting data, thus ensuring rich discussions (Gregory and Lytra, 2012). The project aims to provide rich and comparative descriptions of 16 children aged four to 12 as they learn language and literacy through faith, both in formal (faith class) and informal home settings. Four key participant children were selected from each faith site, based on their own and their family’s engagement with the faith as well as their willingness and commitment to participate in the project. Families themselves are largely responsible for collecting episodes of faith-based activities at home. These recordings are supplemented by scrapbooks made by the children as well as interviews and photos collected by the researchers. The home data form part of a larger corpus of data also collected in the faith setting itself and the faith-based classes (Sunday school, Qur’anic classes and religious instruction classes in the Tamil school).
The data excerpts presented below were collected by the families using Flip cameras (simple video cameras) or audio-recorders. The recordings then formed the basis of discussion with the researchers whom the children knew well. Hence, all were made in relaxed surroundings where families themselves actively participate in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data. For reasons of space, we have chosen just one excerpt from one of the four families in each community for analysis below. However, they are indicative of interactions from a number of practices where faith narratives permeate everyday life. The narratives chosen for analysis below are: an imaginative story by seven-year-old Tanja; a ‘playing school’ story reading by six-year-old Isha; a bedtime story shared between eight-year-old Adam and his father; and a rhyme and dance sung by nine-year-old Bema and her friend looking back to when they were first introduced to the genre of sung texts in Sunday school at the age of two.
We take a case-study approach to investigate the role of faith as it appears in the children’s everyday narratives (Gregory, 1998, 2008; Volk and de Acosta, 2004). Syncretism is a recurring theme throughout our data and our analysis shows how it is woven into the different strands of each faith in London. For each case study, we start by presenting syncretism within the faith setting, in its history and present activities, and then discuss the syncretic elements within the literacy activity in each family as well as the languages, narratives, skills and knowledge that children use.
Syncretizing faith and everyday worlds
Tamil Hindu/Saiva case study: Tanja’s narrative
O Lord Muruga, In the beautiful city of London, Which is garlanded by the fleeting Thames River, At the heart of East Ham town, Is the Temple that is Your divine abode
The commemorative book, marking the unveiling of the new Temple, syncretically describes the Temple's location in the form of a poem in English that is infused with elements of Tamil poetic language used for devotional purposes. This example of syncretic literacy introduces the story of the London Sri Murugan Temple. The Temple's journey began humbly in 1975 in a terraced house in London. In 2005, the new London Sri Murugan Temple was built in the East London Borough of Newham. The Temple is a large and impressive edifice, built of white stone and marble, all of which were brought across from India. Yet, both the setting and the Temple itself reveal a delicate syncretism of East and West, of traditional and modern. The very fact that the Hindu Temple was built on Church Road illustrates how the site has syncretically merged with its surroundings, since it was built in a road that previously housed a church. Underfloor heating allows the priests to dress traditionally and the congregation to walk without shoes on the marble floor. Statues of the deities are labelled in both English and Tamil and a large flat-screen television displays Temple news in English, as well as a list of families for whom a pooja (religious service) will be given.
Tanja regularly attends religious services and celebrations at the London Sri Murugan Temple. She is from a Tamil Hindu/Saiva family which came to the UK from Germany five years ago. Her parents migrated to Germany from Northern Sri Lanka and, after having two children, decided to relocate to the UK for their children’s education. In the excerpt below, seven-year-old Tanja, whose narrative of Cinderella, Pillaiyar (Lord Ganesh) and Krishna opened this paper, is telling another story in English to the researcher, Arani, and her brother, Hajipan. Besides being one of the primary recipients of the story, Arani is also video-recording the storytelling.
Excerpt 1
1 Arani: Ok, so tell me a story about something interesting happening in 2 the Temple 3 Tanja: Ok, er in the Temple, no um nothing was real, in the night 4 everyone suddenly came real! 5 Arani: Wow! Who came real? 6 Tanja: Pillaiyar [Lord Ganesh] and Krishna and the um, um and 7 Arani: All the Gods? Everyone? 8 Tanja: Yeah 9 Arani: What did they do in the Temple in the night, when they’re alive? 10 Tanja: They, they killed all the bad people, then they ran and ran and 11 been so happy and they had a race, and they went to the shop, every 12 shop, and, and then they lost their selves then they came back in the 13 right place they had to be 14 Arani: In the morning? 15 Tanja: Yeah 16 Arani: Wow! Ok so does anyone know about this? 17 Tanja: No! 18 Arani: It’s a secret? 19 Tanja: (whispering and laughing) Yeah eh, eh! 20 Arani: So how do you know about it? 21 Tanja: Um I just um, um just made it up 22 Arani: (laughing) alright (Tanja, video-recording 21 September 2011)
Equally happy in both Tamil and English, Tanja blends different cultural threads in her life through her imaginative stories. She does so by confidently and creatively combining characters, plots and descriptions from different narrative traditions, including popular fairy tales and films in English and tales of Hindu gods and religious films in Tamil. In the narrative above, as Tanja tells her story in English, she explores the concept of inanimate objects that magically come to life at night (lines 3–4). This trope is found in folk tales, such as Cinderella, where the protagonist arrives at the ball with magical transport which returns to its original form after midnight, as well as in popular films, such as The Night in the Museum (2006, 2009) in which the museum exhibits that are alive at night must be inside the museum at dawn or be destroyed by the sun. Similar to popular folk tales and films, Tanja sets her story at night when things are most magical and unpredictable, but which then settle into seeming normality during the day. This is echoed in her own story in which the gods ‘lost their selves then they came back in the right place they had to be’ (lines 12–13).
Tanja draws on and syncretically combines other influences from the Tamil religious stories she has repeatedly heard from her parents and faith teachers at the religious instruction classes she attends on Saturday afternoons as well as the religious films she watches with her family at home. For instance, in the Tamil narrative tradition, gods come down in disguises unknown to the people they help. In popular Tamil religious films like Thiruvilayadal (1965), there is a scene depicting Lord Shiva in human form emerging from the Sivalingam (a stone statue in ellipsoid form, which is a representation of the deity). Through her religious socialization, Tanja has come to believe that God is really present within inanimate objects and that He chooses when to take human form. Another theme she uses, influenced by religious stories, has to do with the gods’ actions to kill all the bad people (line 10). Tanja is familiar with battle scenes between gods and asurars (demons) in religious films. A similar battle scene is also enacted as part of a ceremony at the temple in which Lord Murugan defeats the demon Surapadman, a ceremony Tanja has been witnessing since her early childhood. Finally, she includes the theme of the race. While this theme is common in folk tales such as The Hare and the Tortoise, the theme of gods racing appears in the Tamil religious narrative of Murugan, Pillaiyar and the Mango (which represents the magical fruit of knowledge). In this story, Murugan and Pillaiyar race around the world to determine who will win the mango. This story also appears in the religious film Thiruvilayadal (1965) and it is frequently retold to children by their parents. Thus, we see how Tanja syncretically weaves together different themes and influences from a range of narrative traditions and film sources that she has accessed in Tamil and English to create her own story.
Muslim Bangladeshi case study: Isha’s narrative
As I enter the East London Mosque to take part in the Friday prayers, I am surrounded by some striking Islamic calligraphy from Turkey. Signs, posters, flyers all posted in English, Arabic and some are translated into Bengali. The diverse group of volunteers keep the congregation under control, as I listen to the sermon in English; I struggle to stay awake as it is translated for my brothers and sisters into Arabic and Bengali. The mosque is overcrowded and overused by the local community of Somalis, Bangladeshis and now North Africans. (Halimun, field narrative excerpt, 25 September 2009)
Halimun, researcher for the Bangladeshi Muslim faith community, describes some of the syncretic features evident in the linguistic landscape (e.g. the multilingual signage, Islamic calligraphy) and multilingual sermon practices in the East London Mosque and the adjoining Muslim Centre. Both sites are situated in Whitechapel Road, East London and accommodate over 500 worshippers on a day-to-day basis. This increases to over 4,000 during the month of Ramadan. As the adhaan (call to prayer) is heard imams from Egypt, Uganda and Bangladesh are invited to bring the East End of London to a standstill as they begin prayers. Yet it was not always so. A century ago, when the mosque was first conceived, the population was mainly Jewish, people fleeing from the pogroms of Eastern Europe. Now, the Fieldgate Street synagogue is surrounded by the London Muslim Centre and the East London Mosque.
Six-year-old Isha was born in the East End of London, not far from the East London Mosque. Like other British-born children of Bangladeshi heritage in the area, she attends the nursery class at the East London Mosque on Sundays and Evening Madrasah two evenings during the week, where she learns both Qur’anic Arabic and Arabic language. Before embarking on the narrative excerpt below, Isha parks herself comfortably in her pink pyjamas inside her duvet and safely places her three-month-old brother beside her with the help of their mum. Isha takes the opportunity to read to her little brother while he is still awake.
As their mum records Isha reading to her baby brother, she is also listening to Isha. This is a regular bedtime practice to improve her reading skills. The book is a dual-language (Bengali/English) version of Dear Zoo (Campbell, 1982), a classic and a firm favourite for children under five. It is now available in 16 languages, including Arabic and Bengali. It is one of Isha’s much-loved books; she knows the story and thoroughly enjoys reading it to her little brother. It tells the story of a child searching for a new pet; the child has written to the zoo asking for a pet, so the zoo sends him a variety of pets to try out. A ‘lift-the-flap’ feature allows the child to be interactive. Isha opts to read the English version, in which she is fluent, and leaves the Bengali side for her grandparents to read to her.
Excerpt 2
1 Isha: He was too big 2 Isha: I sented him back 3 Isha: So the next 4 Isha: cc me 5 Isha: The next me 6 Husnara (Isha’s mum): That says sent 7 Isha: They sent me (pauses) -> 8 Isha: A giraffatoon!! 9 Isha: He was too tall 10 Isha: They sent him back 11 Isha: So they next me a… 12 Isha: He was too fierce! 13 Isha: His next 14 Isha: Him back 15 Isha: (self-corrects) Sent him back 16 Isha: So the next, they sent me 17 Isha: a (pauses) -> 18 Isha: camelatoon! 19 Isha: (takes the book up to baby brother’s face) Mwah! 20 Isha: He was too grumpy 21 Isha: He, I said 22 Isha: I sent him back … (Isha, video-recording, 15 September 2011)
While Isha is reading Dear Zoo to her baby brother, she draws on her developing literacy skills in English and Arabic to transform existing words in English and create new ones influenced by the phonetics and phonology of Arabic. Her reading performance illustrates how she attempts to keep her baby brother in anticipation, very much like what she has observed her teacher do during reading time in mainstream school, which she attends from Monday to Friday. In her mainstream classes, children are rewarded with story time before they are dismissed. Isha has observed her teacher perform regularly to a class of 30 children and is now eager to put her own teaching into practice. As Isha reads ‘they sent me’, she opens the flap, sees the giraffe and briefly pauses (line 7). Instead of pronouncing the word giraffe in English or translating it into Arabic (‘zaraafah’), she transforms it into an Arabic-sounding made-up word a ‘giraffatoon’ (line 8).
At the East London Mosque nursery, Isha is learning through play; she is in the beginning stages of Qur’anic literacy and is able to name animals, numbers, alphabets, colours, furniture and much more in Arabic. Children learn to read the Qur’an, applying the Tajweed (rules of recitation), from an early age at nursery. Isha has confidently learned to apply the correct rules of recitation in her Arabic language class and often takes the role of the teacher to help her peers. On this occasion, she creatively applies the Tajweed skills she is developing in her Arabic language class for Qur’anic literacy to the reading activity at home: she prolongs the [o] of the invented word and pronounces the [r] from the back of her throat, which illustrates her awareness that consonant articulation in Arabic is different to English and that the same letters are often pronounced and emphasized from different parts of the throat, mouth and nose. As Isha continues reading, she syncretizes other English words by applying the rules of Tajweed (e.g. a camel becomes a ‘camelatoon’, in line 18). Isha not only syncretizes two different languages, phonology and phonetic systems, but also successfully combines her different experiences as a young reader in two languages and scripts (English and Arabic) from three different teaching and learning contexts, her mainstream nursery, Qur’anic and Arabic classes, to perform her teacher role for her baby brother.
Polish Catholic case study: Adam’s narrative
The syncretic nature of the Polish Catholic School in Norwood, South London is reflected in the artefacts, activities and corresponding identities of the communities it serves. Set up by former Polish Second World War soldiers and their families in the 1950s, two elegant nineteenth-century Victorian houses adjoin a group of low modern buildings to form a complex accommodating the priests, Polish Saturday school, community hall and chapel. Entering the school hall, a photo of Marshal Pilsudski, a Polish military hero, hangs beside that of Queen Elizabeth II: these serve to remind families of the historical links between Poland and Britain fighting together during the Second World War, as well as Poland’s long fight for independence. On the walls of the classrooms and the staircase, there are photos of the Polish Pope, John Paul II, alongside photos of the founders of the community and a collection of photos showing young children dressed in folk costumes dancing Polish folk dances, children performing Nativity plays and the community choir singing in classical music concerts. These hang beside wooden or metal crucifixes and the Polish national emblem of white eagles on a red background. Together, these comprise a big photo album, where British and Polish, old and new, past and present, religion, culture and history blend together to form an illustrated history of a Polish community in London.
Eight-year-old Adam and his parents represent the new Polish migration to Britain. They came from Poland to London when Adam was four. Adam’s parents are Roman Catholic and they regularly attend the Polish Catholic church in Norwood. Adam continues to speak Polish at home and develops his Polish literacy skills as well as his knowledge of the Catholic faith at the Polish community school every Saturday morning. The family have strong links with their Polish friends in London and also friends and relatives in Poland. The narrative excerpt below comes from a 10-minute audio-recording of a Bible story reading by Adam’s dad. The story is Noah’s Ark and it is read from a Polish Bible for children, given to Adam by his mum who, in turn, received it from her priest when she was attending catechism classes in Poland.
In the story of Noah’s Ark from the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, which is believed to be written by the Prophet Moses, God punishes wicked mankind by sending a great flood to the earth. Before it happens, the only righteous man, Noah, is rewarded, as God gives him instructions on how to build an ark. Noah takes his family and two pairs of each existing type of animal on board and when the waters recede they leave the ark to repopulate the world. Adam’s dad reads this story to him in bed. His reading of the story is interspersed with the child’s questions and dad’s answers. For instance, Adam wants to know if there was an eagle on the ark which, as he stresses, is a ‘Polish bird’, and Adam’s dad clarifies that the eagle is ‘a symbol of the Polish emblem’. After the story Adam has more questions (the discussion is in Polish apart from the brief code-switch to English in line 75; a translation is in italics):
Excerpt 3
… 64 Adam: A tatuś.., Arka to wtedy musiała być jak Tytanik żeby to 65 wszystko zmieścić <And daddy… , the Ark must have been like the 66 Titanic to be able to fit it all> 67 Adam’s dad: No… , kto wie czy nawet jeszcze nie większa, wiesz? 68 <Mhmm. Yes… who knows… , maybe even bigger… , you know?> 69 Adam: No… <Yes…> 70 Adam’s dad: No… <Yes…> 71 Adam: Jeszcze tylko silnika by brakowało i by było jak Tytanik <If it 72 had an engine it would be like the Titanic…> 73 Adam’s dad: No… , wtedy ludzie nie znali takiej, takiej techniki <Well… 74 in those times people didn’t know such such technology> 75 Adam: Ale znali te takie, do sterowania… , 76 things for steering… , 77 Adam’s dad: Mhm… , ster, Adaś, ster <Mhm… , rudder, Adam, rudder> 78 Adam: ster, ster <rudder, rudder> 79 Adam’s dad: Tak, oczywiście <Yes, of course> 80 Adam: A tatuś, ten ster działał na linkach, czy na jakichś tam innym 81 mechanizmie…? <and, daddy, the rudder works on ropes, or does it 82 have some other mechanism…?> 83 Adam’s dad: Er… nie… , myslę, że był sterowany takim, takim er… , nie 84 wiem jak to się fachowo nazywa… , takim drągiem, wiesz… <Er… no… , I 85 think it was steered with, with such, such… , I don’t know what the 86 technical term is… , with such a pole… , you know…> … (Adam, audio-recording 21 October 2010)
Having been told that the ark could accommodate all the animals on earth, Adam makes a connection with the Titanic, the largest passenger steamship at the time of its sinking in 1912 (lines 64–65). Adam is an avid reader with an interest in transport. He gains considerable technical knowledge from Polish and English books and specialist magazines. Adam read about the Titanic and her tragedy for the first time in a Polish book, which was given to him as a present. Later on he watched two documentary films about the ship on English television. He also went with his parents to the Maritime Museum in London where he watched a short film about the ship’s tragedy in English and discussed the exhibits with his parents in Polish. In the narrative excerpt above, Adam reveals his detailed technical knowledge about ships when he comments about the ship’s engine (line 71) and rudder and the way it all works (lines 75, 80–81). Adam uses the English word ‘rudder’ as he reads specialist books on transport, mainly in English. However, he is familiar with the Polish equivalent ‘ster’, which his dad insists that he uses.
In Adam’s mind the faith story of Noah’s Ark triggers a secular modern narrative about the Titanic, with its factual technical knowledge and vocabulary gained by the child from different sources, such as books, the media and conversations with parents, and in different places, such as Poland, England, home and school, English school, the Polish Saturday school in London and trips with parents. This knowledge is accessed by the child through two languages, Polish and English. In this reading of the Bible story, different periods of time, and different spaces, languages, sources and threads of knowledge are juxtaposed and syncretized to reflect the multidimensional and enriching experiences of the child. A similar process of syncretizing knowledge and experiences emerges in the timeline that Adam created for Malgorzata, the researcher (Figure 1). His text-making reveals how he combines religious (e.g. the Holy Cross) and secular images (e.g. the racing car and aeroplane with the red and white colours of the Polish flag) that matter to him with the formal genre of writing a famous person’s biography to provide snapshots of his life in Brzeg (Poland) and London associated with his faith and transnational experiences (e.g. his baptism in Poland, his enrolment in the Polish church in South Norwood and in the Polish and catechism classes at the Polish Saturday school).
Adam’s autobiographical timeline.
Ghanaian Pentecostal case study: Bema’s narrative
The syncretic nature of the Church of Pentecost, slightly further into the East London suburbs, is immediately discerned in the architecture and use of the building over time. It is housed in a splendid Edwardian building. Its grandeur reflects its service to the community over nearly 100 years, first as a cinema and then as a bingo hall. Now, there are still dances and music, but for a different purpose. The stage retains its draped red curtains and carpeted floor. Since the early 1980s, the Church of Pentecost has grown to over 6,000 members nationwide. Most members of the congregation live locally, while others travel from other parts of London, Kent and Essex. Although the services are run in a similar way in Ghana, and whereas the local community in Ghana speaks Twi (and other indigenous Ghanaian languages), in London, the community speaks a range of African, Asian, European languages and English. Reflecting its internationalism, services are conducted in both Twi and English. As a warm-up to the service, the women dance to complement the music of the amplified band, using a Ghanaian drum, gourd rattle, double-bell, a Western keyboard and guitar, and backed by the singing of the chorus on stage. The pastor greets the congregation, ‘Halleluiah’, and the congregation responds, ‘Praise the Lord’.
Nine-year-old Bema regularly attends Sunday school at the Pentecostal church, which is taught mainly in English. However, since the age of two, she has heard, practised and performed ‘call-and-response’ songs based on scripted question and answer sequences in Twi and English. Every year she participates in Children’s Day when children perform such sung texts on stage for the older generations of worshippers, but she also frequently sings these songs at home. She explains to the researcher that she enjoys sung texts because they help her to remember details about her faith. In the following narrative excerpt, Bema and her friend perform one of the ‘call-and-response’ songs in Twi and English, which they learned many years earlier, for Amoafi, the researcher, to video-record. The girls accompany the song with gestures and traditional body movements (the song is in Twi but retains some English names; translations are in italics):
Excerpt 4
1 Ↄfrɛ: Yesu maame de sen? <Call: What is the mother of Jesus called?> 2 Nnyeso: Mary. <Response: Mary> 3 Ↄfrɛ: Ↄpapa de sen? <Call: What is his father called?> 4 Nnyeso: Joseph. <Response: Joseph> 5 Ↄfrɛ: Yɛwoo no wↃ he? <Call: Where was he born?> 6 Nnyeso: Bethlehem. <Response: Bethlehem> 7 Ↄfrɛ: YɛbↃↃ no (a)su wↃ he? <Call: Where was he baptized?> 8 Nnyeso: Jordan. <Response: Jordan.> 9 Ↄfrɛ: Yesu de ne nkwa ato 10 11 Nkabom: (A)bofra bↃ me bo <Together: A child on my chest.> 12 e-e-e, (a)bofra bↃ me bo, <eh-eh-eh, a child on my chest> 13 e-e-e, (a)bofra bↃ me bo, <eh-eh-eh, a child on my chest> 14 e-e-e, (a)bofra bↃ me bo. <eh-eh-eh, a child on my chest> (Bema’s mum, video-recording 2 March 2011)
In this excerpt, Bema brings together different linguistic and cultural influences and life experiences rooted in Ghana and London and mediated through English and Twi languages and cultures. She combines her linguistic expertise in Twi and English with Ghanaian expressive gestures and rhythmic bodily movements to perform the religious song that she has practised numerous times since the age of two (Figure 2). Auntie Yaa, a faith teacher of the youngest group, explains how children are introduced to ‘call-and-response’ songs: ‘When the two-year-olds start attending Sunday school, we teach them through call-and-response. The first thing they learn through these songs is that “Jesus is a friend of all children” in order to engage with them.’
Bema (right) and her friend perform the ‘call-and-response’ song.
Drawing on her knowledge of the Twi language and culture and her Christian faith mainly accessed through English, Bema creatively replaces the words she cannot remember with words that rhyme and which rhythmically and semantically fit in with the song. She sings: ‘Nkabom: (A)bofra bↃ me bo’ <Together: A child on my chest> instead of ‘Nkabom: Mafa abↃ me bo’ <Together: I’m carrying it forward> (line 10). Bema explains that through the ‘call-and-response’ pattern of the song, she learns and remembers important faith facts in Twi. This knowledge complements her developing knowledge of the faith in English: the names of Jesus’s mother and father as well as where Jesus was born and baptized. Most importantly, by syncretizing these different elements, Bema comes to internalize the key message of the religious song that ‘Ↄfrɛ: Yesu de ne nkwa ato fam’ <Call: Jesus has laid down his life> (line 9) to mean ‘Jesus died for us’.
Discussion and conclusions
We have shown how different linguistic, cultural and experiential threads are woven throughout the children’s narratives. However, these syncretic elements do not remain separate in their minds. Crucially, all the children pick and choose from a whole variety of resources to create personal sense and meaning in their lives. In this way, children syncretize narratives from everyday life experiences with those of their faith to increase their knowledge, and their linguistic and cognitive skills. Thus, Adam draws upon his knowledge of technology (use of the rudder), his experience of watching films and his learning from the faith class where he learns about his heritage country and its emblem of the eagle, to create a personal understanding of Noah’s Ark. Tanja brings her experience of watching many dramatizations of stories of the deities as well as knowledge of Cinderella from school to create new imaginary adventures. Bema uses rhyme, movement and dance to create her own version of Bible facts in both English and Twi. Isha creates ‘Arabicized’ words when she sees that they have a special meaning (being under the flap) and when she is unsure of the English word.
Syncretism is just one theoretical lens through which we view our data. Other academic disciplines or research paradigms offer different explanations. If we draw upon ideas from sociolinguistics and focus on the language use and language skills of the children we see how Isha and Adam can be described as ‘translanguaging’ (Creese and Blackledge, 2010), in that they are simultaneously using the different languages they have in their repertoires to make sense of their lives. We might also draw upon visual and sensual ethnography to interpret the data as they relate to time and space, as well as the importance of the senses and memory in children’s lives (Pink, 2009). Ingold (2000: 285) refers to ‘the creative interweaving of experience in discourse… which… in turn affect peoples’ perceptions of the world around them’ and would place the children’s perceptions at the centre of analysis. This would speak particularly to Isha and Tanja’s narratives. Bema and her friend’s narrative exemplify work conducted by Knowles (2009), which describes the interpenetration of past memory and presents reality via bodily practices in Toronto. Finally, all the children’s narratives can be interpreted through studies that stress the importance of imaginative and creative play, showing how children reveal maturity and skill in addition to linguistic flexibility as they act out different roles and purposes (Poveda et al., 2005).
However, we believe that the lens of syncretism enables a multi-layered interpretation of faith practices transplanted across time and space and acted out by young children in twenty-first century London. Two factors illustrate this more overarching frame of reference. First, the concept of syncretism is not bound to issues of language, play or perception; nor is it confined to any particular academic discipline. The brief excerpts above show how the concept can inform analysis on a number of levels: the historical and architectural, written texts, interaction patterns, as well as rituals, dance, song, routines, language and even cognitive shifts. Second, as argued in our definition of syncretism earlier in this paper, the result of such merging and blending of different aspects produces more than just the sum of its constituents. When Adam compares Noah’s Ark to the Titanic, he is doing more than ‘translanguaging’ or simultaneously using different forms or signs. Drawing upon his interest in the fortunes of the eagle as a ‘Polish bird’, the Titanic from his knowledge of the film, technology and the ‘rudder’, which he knows only in English, he is making a cognitive leap across cultures, history and technology, as well as language. When Isha uses ‘camelatoon’ and ‘giraffatoon’, she is not just code-switching, but inventing language that she finds relevant to her Qur’anic literacy. All this is stimulated by faith practices. Syncretism as an analytical tool enables us to unpick each of these parts. It is not surprising that studies on syncretism are rooted in faith, since faith activities span a wealth of linguistic, cognitive, aesthetic and physical activities. Although these seem to stand in stark contrast, they are often seamlessly woven into everyday life.
All children, whether or not their families have shifted countries, syncretize narratives since they are in a constant process of drawing upon old stories to interpret new events; these will be part of their new social, cultural and personal world. Hence, children’s stories will be very different from those of their grandparents, yet they will be influenced by those passed down from them. Thus, we argue here that syncretism provides a particularly valuable framework for interpreting the learning of children who draw upon languages, literacies and practices from very different cultures. The elements (languages, rituals, dances and other practices) juxtaposed are very different from experiences offered in mainstream school, making the children’s creations and recreations visible and striking to those who are familiar with their faith.
This paper shows how faith narratives provide a foundation that feeds children’s everyday worlds: their stories, their beliefs, their interaction with others, their language and literacy skills, including rhyming abilities and even their technical knowledge. The scope of ‘narratives’ as interpreted in this paper is wide. Hardy (1977: 13) argues for narrative to be seen as a primary act of mind: ‘…we dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticise, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative’. Faith narratives provide children with important and dramatic stories in their lives. The holy texts provide stories shared by both adults and children alike – stories that are part of a whole moral and belief system. As such, they are on a different level from folk or fairy tales and, like participating in sociodramatic play, children become a head taller than their everyday selves. Noah’s Ark provides Adam with a story of extraordinary magnitude, which he can compare with a giant tsunami: a disaster for which a solution is found and the world is saved. Bema knows that Jesus died to save mankind. Tanja, Bema and Adam vicariously experience life and death adventures and disasters and learn the power of good over evil through these stories and rhymes. Finally, Isha, our youngest child, uses her memory of her Qur’anic class within her role as ‘teacher’ of her baby brother. Like Duranti and Ochs (1996) in the USA, our work in faith settings in Britain highlights the ways in which cultural threads from diverse sources are interwoven into a single interactional fabric and enacted in daily routines. Faith narratives, heard over and over again, provide patterns of stories for children to call upon, both in their informal home and their formal faith school settings.
We are also beginning to see evidence that faith narratives travel with children into their classrooms, providing a firm foundation for learning. In her study of a young child’s literacy development at home and at school within an Old Order Amish community (a Christian sect whose members nowadays live mainly in the state of Pennsylvania, in the USA), Fishman (1990) shows how children immediately recognize and identify with their teacher’s interpretation of the literacy task in hand. This recognition is made possible because of the children’s smooth transition from home to school: the child first becomes socialized into the rules, norms and expectations regarding what counts as literacy for the Old Order Amish community in the home setting. Then, as Fishman (1990: 31) argues, the Old Order Amish school reinforces, extends and rarely contradicts what the child already knows about literacy. This will not be the case in the UK or most other European countries where children’s faith practices at home are often totally outside their own school experience as well as their mainstream teachers’ experience. To what extent and in what ways are children able to draw upon faith learning in their mainstream classrooms? How can children simultaneously align themselves with traditional rituals in faith settings while syncretizing this knowledge with mainstream practices in their everyday lives? Such questions remain largely absent from the research. However, we believe that this will be a rich area for future studies.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank the children, parents, faith leaders and faith teachers for their warm welcome in the four faith settings. We also thank the other members of the Becoming Literate in Faith Settings (BeLiFS) team: John Jessel, Charmian Kenner, Mahera Ruby, Ana Souza and Olga Barradas. This paper emerges from a larger study on ‘Becoming literate through faith: Language and literacy learning in the lives of new Londoners’, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK (ESRC, RES-062-23-1613). This support is duly acknowledged.