The final chapter presents the conclusions of the book, looking specifically at how speaking publicly gives people authority, particularly when others listen to and support them. Then it discusses the challenges and opportunities of speaking about one's faith in contemporary, technologically mediated contexts. Finally, how diversity of belief is managed within religious communities is discussed, in relation to the data analysed in the previous chapters.

This chapter focuses on how authority is claimed by individuals in religious traditions and the role of sacred texts as the 'word of God' in both Christianity and Islam. How individuals take on that authority for themselves, using scared texts in their discourse is analysed, with a discussion of how people of different faiths discuss the differences in their sacred texts, and how they establish authority when cultural norms change.

This chapter begins with defining the key terms of religion and discourse, presenting how different approaches to language have influenced the understanding of religious experience and vice versa. A definition of discourse is provided whichfocuses on functions, embodied cognition, and emergence. Religion and spiritual experience have been described from a variety ofperspectives with attempts to understand language with various perspectives (functional, embodied cognition, and emergence) applied to religious language and talk about religious experience. Finally, the emergence and influence of mediatisation and secularisation are discussed in terms of their effects on religious believers.

This chapter focuses on giving theoretical and methodological frameworks for dealing with religious discourse. While religious discourse can be observed in a variety of places, given the focus of this research on language-in-use and the development of religious belief and practice in these contexts, public dialogues about religion, in both supportive and antagonistic settings, are used as the primary data in this study. The data represents the ways in which speakers, foregrounding their religious identity, speak about religious belief and practice together, with a focus on instances in which the speakers are addressing challenges to the beliefs posed by social changes, such as those about homosexuality. Data sources were identified as a part of an ongoing, ten-year longitudinal observation of religious users online following principles of Discourse-Centred Online Ethnography and describing the changes in systems in interaction over time, following the principles of a Discourse-Dynamics Approach and discourse analysis using Positioning Theory.

This chapter focuses on how religion is reprented in contemporary life and how categories like 'Christian' and 'Muslim' are established both within one's own religious community and in contrast to people of different faiths. The role of religion in the wider world is then considered with a particualr focus on how religionsadapt to changing cultural norms.

This chapter addresses the opportunities and challenges for believers living in the contemporary world, balancing the pressures of their own communities and their individual belief. The chapter discusses the influence of the market economy on the the presentation of belief in the contemporary world, and how debates between people of the same faith arise and are resolved. The focus on individual choice and personal conviction is analysed in relation to topics of debate within Christianity and Islam.

Chapter Two, “Toward the Recreation of a Field of Indexicality: Domestic Violence, Social Meaning, and Ideology,” begins the real analytical work, building a theory of indexicality that can be used to analyze and understand the narrative, interactional work done in storytelling about domestic violence. In Chapter 2, I identify the myriad ideas, concepts, values, and ideologies that circulate in narratives about domestic violence and encounters between police officers and victim/survivors of domestic violence. I argue that the field of indexicality functions like a tapestry made out of stories told about domestic violence and police, while also informing and shaping said tapestry. For example, nearly every participant in the study, police officer and victim/survivor alike, touches on issues of emotional violence, physical violence, staying in and leaving abusive relationships, and policing. In this variety of stories, a great number of values and topics emerge that identify some of the fundamental ideological structures that underpin domestic violence and keep it a culturally viable structure.

In the conclusion, I sum up the arguments of the book by looking in two directions: first, toward language theory and second, toward domestic violence. On the side of language theory, I have made arguments about identity, indexicality and narrative, and then I have correlated them with arguments about staying/leaving narratives, emotional violence, and other facets of domestic violence. The narrative and analytical piece that holds it all together is law enforcement. In this conclusion chapter, I also review and comment on issues such as sexuality and race that I did not deal with in the book, proper.