Publications

Please see many of my research articles, available on Research Gate or by emailing me directly.

MONOGRAPHS
Pihlaja, Stephen. (2024) Narrative and Religion in the Superdiverse City. Cambridge University Press (Element Series).

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2021) Talk about Faith: how debate and conversation shape belief. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781108475990

Richardson, Peter, Mueller, Charles, and Stephen Pihlaja (2021). Cognitive Linguistics and Religious Language: An Introduction. Routledge. ISBN: 9780367484613

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2018) Religious Talk Online: the evangelical discourse of Muslims, Christians, and atheists. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781316661963

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2014) Antagonism on YouTube: Metaphor in Online Discourse. Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9781472566690

EDITED BOOKS
Pihlaja, Stephen, and Helen Ringrow (eds.) (2023) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion. Routledge. 

Pihlaja, Stephen (ed.). (2021) Analysing Religious Discourse. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781108836135

Ringrow, Helen & Stephen Pihlaja (eds.). (2020) Contemporary Media Stylistics. Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9781350064096

Seargeant, Philip, Hewings, Ann, & Stephen Pihlaja (eds.). (2018) Routledge Handbook for English Language Studies. Routledge. ISBN: 9781138913455

SPECIAL ISSUES
Pihlaja, Stephen. (ed.) (2017) Special Issue: Metaphor in Religion and Spirituality. Metaphor and the Social World 7/1: 1-4 (Introduction). DOI: 10.1075/msw.7.1

Allington, Daniel & Stephen Pihlaja. (2016) Special Issue Introduction: Interpretation in the Age of the Internet. Language & Literature 25/3: 201-210 (Introduction)DOI: 10.1177/0963947016652781

RESEARCH ARTICLES & CHAPTERS
Mueller, Charles, Richardson, Peter, and Stephen Pihlaja (2023) A mental spaces analysis of religious identity discourseReview of Cognitive Linguistics. DOI: 10.1075/rcl.00159.mue

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2023) Abstraction in Storytelling. Narrative Inquiry. DOI: 10.1075/ni.22045.pih

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2022) Swoldiers in the Swoldier Nation: YouTube Fitness Vlogs and the Performance of Mental Health, Strength, and Happiness on Social Media. In Lawrence, S. (ed.) Digital Wellness, Health and Fitness Influencers: Critical Perspectives on Digital Guru Media (pgs. 144-160). London: Routledge.

Pihlaja, Stephen, Whisker, Daniel, and Lisa Vickerage-Goddard. (2022) Categories in Discourse about Church of England Primary EducationReligion & Education. DOI: 10.1080/15507394.2022.2102876 

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2020). 
The style of online preachers. In Ringrow, Helen & Stephen Pihlaja (eds.). Contemporary Media Stylistics (pgs. 297–316). London: Bloomsbury.

Richardson, Peter, Pihlaja, Stephen, Nagashima, Miori, Wada, Masako, Watanabe, Makoto and Kheovichai, Baramee. (2019). Blasphemy and persecution: Positioning in an inter-religious discussion. Text & Talk, 40/1: 75-98. DOI: 10.1515/text-2019-2049

Richardson, Peter & Stephen Pihlaja. (2018) Contemporary Evangelical Christian Interpretations of the Jericho Massacre in the Context of Anti-Immigration and Anti-Muslim TrendsPostscripts, 9/1: 27-49. DOI: 10.1558/post.36984

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2018) Hey YouTube! Positioning the Viewer in Vlogs. In Page, R., Nørgaard, N., & Busse, B. Rethinking Language, Text and Context (pgs. 254-265). London: Routledge.

Thompson, Naomi & Stephen Pihlaja (2018) Temporary liberties and uncertain futures: young female Muslim perceptions of life in England, Journal of Youth Studies 21/10, 1326-1343, DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2018.1468021

Pihlaja, Stephen & 
Naomi Thompson. (2018) “I love the Queen”: Positioning in young British Muslim discourse. Discourse, Context, & Media 20: 52-58. DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2017.08.002

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2017) More than 50 shades of grey: Creative content and copyright on social networking sites. Applied Linguistics Review 8/2-3:213-228. DOI: 10.1515/applirev-2016-1036

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2017) 'When Noah built the ark...': metaphor and Biblical stories in Facebook preaching. Metaphor and the Social World 7/1: 88-105. DOI: 10.1075/msw.7.1.06pih

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2016) ‘What about the wolves?’: The use of scripture in YouTube arguments. Language & Literature 25/3: 226-238. DOI: 10.1177/0963947016652784

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2016) Expressing pleasure and avoiding engagement in online adult video comment sections. Language & Sexuality 5/1: 96-114. DOI: 10.1075/jls.5.1.04pih

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2014) 'Christians' and 'bad Christians': Categorization in atheist user talk on YouTube. Text & Talk 34/5: 623-639. DOI: 10.1515/text-2014-0020

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2013) Truck stops and fashion shows: A case study of the discursive construction of Evangelical Christian group identity on YouTube. In Herbert, D. and M. Gillespie. (eds.) Social Media and Religious Change (pgs. 165–184). Berlin: De Gruyter. ISBN: 9783110270488

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2013) ‘It’s all red ink’: the interpretation of Biblical metaphor among Evangelical Christian YouTube users. Language and Literature 22/2: 103–117. DOI: 10.1177/0963947013483996

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2011) Cops, popes, and garbage collectors: Metaphor and antagonism in an atheist/Christian YouTube video thread. Language@Internet, 8, article 1. Available online at: <http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2011/Pihlaja/>

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2011) ‘Are you religious or are you saved?’: Investigating membership categorisation in religious discussions on YouTube. Fieldwork in Religion 6/1: 27-46. DOI: 10.1558/firn.v6i1.47

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2010) The Pope of YouTube: Metaphor and Misunderstanding in Atheist-Christian YouTube Dialogue. The Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue 3: 25–35. Available online at: <http://irdialogue.org/journal/issue03/the-pope-of-youtube-metaphor-and-misunderstanding-in-atheist-christian-youtube-dialogue-by-stephen-pihlaja/>

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2008) "Would you like to dance with me, Miwa?": Gender roles and the EFL text. The School House 16/1: 2–11.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2007) Watch out! The corpus, verb usage and non-native teachers of English. Teachers Helping Teachers Proceedings 2007: 93–103. 


PRACTICAL RESOURCES
Research of the Month (May 2023), RE: ONLINE Website, Culham St Gabriel's https://www.reonline.org.uk/research/research-of-the-month/ 

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2022) How Should We Talk About Our Beliefs? [Poster] DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11245.87521


HANDBOOK & METHODS CHAPTERS
Pihlaja, Stephen. (2022) Data Sampling and Digital Discourse. In Vasquez, C. (ed.) Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis. (pgs. 55-72) New York: Bloomsbury.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2021) Media. In Pihlaja, S. (ed.) Analysing Religious Discourse (pgs. 144-161). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2018) 'Discourse analysis: studying and critiquing language in use' in Seargeant, Philip, Hewings, Ann, & Stephen Pihlaja (eds.) Routledge Handbook for English Language Studies (pgs. 379-391). Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN: 9781138913455

Pihlaja, Stephen and Andreas Musloff. (2017) Language and Ideology. In Wolfram Bublitz & Christian Hoffman. Handbook of Pragmatics 11: Pragmatics of Social Media (pgs. 381-408). Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110431070-014

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2015) Analysing YouTube interaction: a discourse-centred approach. In Cheruvallil-Contractor, S. and Shakkour, S. (eds.) Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion  (pgs. 49-58). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9781472571182

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2014) The Development of 'Drama' in YouTube Discourse. In Page, R., Barton, D., Unger, J.W., and M. Zappavigna (eds.) Researching Language and Social Media: A Student Guide (pg. 35-36). London: Routledge. ISBN: 9780415842006

BOOK REVIEWS
Pihlaja, Stephen. (2021). Book review: Valerie Hobbs, An Introduction to Religious Language: Exploring Theolinguistics in Contemporary ContextsDiscourse Studies, 23(5), 692–694. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456211051179a

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2018) [Review of Creating Church Online: Ritual, Community, and New Media by Tim Hutchings]. Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture, 7.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2017) [Review of Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority by Jonathan Charteris-Black]. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 9(1), 113 – 117.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2017). [Review of The Routledge handbook of language and identity edited by Siân Preece]. Language in Society, 46(4), 594-596. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404517000525

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2011) [Review of the book American Grace: How Religion Unites and Divides by Robert Putnam and David Campbell]. Youth and Policy 107: 116-117. Available online at: http://www.youthandpolicy.org/images/stories/journal107/reviews107.pdf 

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2009) [Review of the book Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage by Gerard Steen]. Linguist List. Available online at: http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-556.html

BLOGS & COLUMNS
Talking about Faith in Superdiverse Spaces (2023) British Educational Research Association Blog Post https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog 

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2021) Bearing the Burden. The Shiloh Project Blog. Available online at https://www.shilohproject.blog/bearing-the-burden/


Thompson, Naomi & Stephen Pihlaja. (2017) Young Muslims and exclusion – experiences of ‘othering’. Youth & Policy. Available online at: http://www.youthandpolicy.org/articles/young-muslims-and-exclusion/

Pihlaja, Stephen (2016) Atheism on YouTube for the last ten years. Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network Blog. Available online at: https://thensrn.org/2016/10/24/reserach-atheism-on-youtube-for-the-last-ten-years/

Pihlaja, Stephen (6 December 2016) ‘How much faith does it take?’ Arguing for Creationism on Facebook. Science & Religion Exploring the Spectrum Blog. Available online at: http://sciencereligionspectrum.org/blog-posts/how-much-faith-does-it-take-arguing-for-creationism-on-facebook/#more-982

Pihlaja, Stephen (5 December 2016) There is still confusion about what constitutes sexual violence. Times Higher Education. Available online at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/confused-students-dont-know-what-sexual-violence


Pihlaja, Stephen. (2015) Freedom to offend: When is Free Speech Hate Speech? The Revealer. Available online at: http://therevealer.org/archives/20089

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2011) YouTube and the Language of Dialogue. The Parliament of the World's Religions Blog. Available online at: http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/news/index.php/2011/11/4206/

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2009) One's loss, another's gain: The challenges of translating “I” in Japanese academic texts. The Translation Journal 13/1. Available online at: http://translationjournal.net/journal/47japanese.htm

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2008) Caught in the middle: Grammar, textbooks, and the Japanese high school. The School House 16/3: 46–55.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2008) Go your own way. The Language Teacher 32/12: 40–41.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (2008) Enhancing classroom experience through a class blog. The Language Teacher, 32/4: 17–18.

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRY
Pihlaja, Stephen. (2017). Categorization. In M. Allen (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of communication research methods (Vol. 4, pp. 120-121). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd. DOI: 10.4135/9781483381411.n50