Keane_Religious Language_ARA 26 (1997).pdf

7/27/2019 Keane_Religious Language_ARA 26 (1997).pdf

1/26

Religious Language

Author(s): Webb KeaneSource: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 26 (1997), pp. 47-71Published by: Annual ReviewsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2952514 .

Accessed: 20/10/2013 06:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toAnnual Review of

Anthropology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 134.58.253.30 on Sun, 20 Oct 2013 06:07:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=annrevshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2952514?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2952514?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=annrevs


2/26

Annu.Rev.Anthropol.1997. 26:47-71Copyright? 1997 byAnnualReviews Inc. All rightsreserved

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGEWebbKeaneDepartmentof Anthropology,Universityof Pennsylvania,Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104KEYWORDS: extandcontext,ntentionality,gency,nteraction,anguagedeology

ABSTRACTThe effort to know and interact with an otherworld ends to demandhighlymarkeduses of linguisticresources. n contrast o less marked peech situations,in religiouscontexts he sourcesof words, as well as the identity,agency, author-ity, and even thevery presenceof participantsn aninteraction, anbe especiallyproblematic.Differentreligiouspracticesalteranyof a varietyof formalandprag-matic featuresof everyday anguage n responseto theirdistinctiveassumptionsabout he world,otherworlds, ndthebeings they contain.Thesepracticesarealsomediatedby speakers'assumptionsabout the natureand workingsof language.Because suchassumptionsbearon thepresumednatureof humanandnonhumansubjects,religiousdebates often dwell on details of verbal and textualpractice.Thestudyof religious anguage oucheson moregeneralproblems oncemingre-lationsamongperformance,ext, and context.It also revealschronic ensionsbe-tween transcendence ndthe situatednatureof practices,withimplications or thenatureof agencyand belief

RELIGIONAND MARKEDLANGUAGE PRACTICESReligion,according o WilliamJames(1902;cf Wallace1966, p. 52), is foundedon thesubjective xperienceof aninvisiblepresence.A similarassumption eemsto underlieEB Tylor'sassertion hatprayersbegin as spontaneous tterances nddegeneratento traditionalormulas Tylor1873, p. 371). An approach, owever,to the study of religionthatbegins with subjectiveexperienceencounters ertaindifficulties.One is epistemological,becausethe observercanonlyhaveaccess tootherpeople'sexperiencesandbeliefsthroughobjectivemanifestations.The dif-ficulty,however, s duenotonlyto theskepticismorpositivismof theoutsider.Topresume hatreligiouspracticederives rompriorexperiencesor beliefsis to playwith theologically oaded dice. An emphasison subjectiveexperience nvolves

470084-6570/97/1015-0047$08.00

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/26

48 KEANEpresuppositions nd entailments hat are not sharedby all religious traditions(Asad 1993).Moreover,concreteactivities suchas speaking,chanting, inging,reading,writing-or theirpurposeful uppression-can be as mucha conditionofpossibilityfor the experienceof the divine as a responseto it (Ferguson1985).This can be especially evident,forinstance, n the contextof proselytization ndconversion, in which language may help make the supernatural elievable(Harding1987)or induce certainreligiousdispositions n theworshiper Rafael1992, cf Foucault1980). In general, analyticapproaches hatstress the publicrather han hesubjectivecharacter f culture Rappaport 979,Schieffelin 1985,Urban1991)are also likelyto concurwithCliffordGeertz'sobservation hat t is"outof the contextof concreteacts of religiousobservance hatreligiousconvic-tionemergeson the humanplane" 1973, pp. 112-13).

Religious observance endsto demandhighly markedandself-conscioususesof linguistic esources. nthisarticle bear nmindthat heanalytic oherence,dis-creteness,anduniversality f thecategoryreligionareproblematic Asad 1993)],religious anguagewillbeprovisionallydefined n termsof theperceiveddistinct-ivenessof certainnteractions,extualpractices,orspeechsituations.Tothe extentthatparticipantsonsiderreligious anguagedifferent romeveryday peech,thisdistinctiveness eemsto respond o some of thecommonsemioticandpragmaticquestions hey face:By whatmeanscanwe, andin what mannerought we, talkwith invisible interlocutors?How can we get them to respond?How shouldwetalkabout hem?By whatmarksdo we know thatsomewordsoriginate romdi-vine sources?Are these wordstrue, fitting,efficacious,or compellingin somespecialway?Thesequestions ouchon moregeneralproblemsconcerninghe re-lationsamongperformance, ext, and context.They also involve the relationsamongexperience,concretepractices,andwhatis culturally onstruedo lie be-yond ordinary xperience,whether hatbe in thepast,the future,at a spatialdis-tance,oracrossan ontologicaldivide. The problemsof communication etweenthis world andanother,or of handlingauthoritativewords derivedfrom distantsources,arecritical o many religiouspractices:Not onlydo theyimpose specialsemioticdifficultieson humanpractitioners,uttheir anguagemust sometimescontendwith the fact that heverypresenceof thedeity, spirits,orancestors an-not be takenforgranted.

IThisreview s confinedargelyoissues hathavebeenraisednempiricaltudies f theroleof languagen religiouspractice. havewritten ittle about he extensive iterature n beliefstatements,he logic of religiousdiscourse,myth,hermeneuticsndscripturalnterpretation,conversion arratives,eminist ritiques f religious hetoric, r the more cattered iscussionsof oaths,blessings,anduses of writingas material rtifact.Thereviewalsodoes not addressresearch tthe ntersectionetweenanguage ndmusic. tdoes,however, ast henetbroadlyoincludepracticesuchas divination ndso-called"magic,"whichsomedefinitions f religionexclude (often on theologicallyparochialand historically hifting grounds).Throughout,citations re imited oworksavailablenEnglish.



4/26

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE 49Language s one mediumby which the presenceandactivityof beings thatareotherwiseunavailable o the senses canbe madepresupposable,even com-pelling, in ways that arepublically yet also subjectivelyavailable to people as

membersof social groups. However,no single set of formal orpragmatic ea-tures is diagnostic of religious as opposed to othermarkeduses of language,suchas poetic or ceremonialspeech.Rather,differentreligiouspractices seemto select from among the entire spectrumof linguistic possibilities (Murray1989, Sherzer1990, Tedlock 1983). They suspendor altercertainaspects ofeveryday ways of speaking (even when religious languageis taken to be priorto the everyday)in response to problemsposed by theirparticularotherworldsandtheir assumptionsaboutthe everyday.Religious languageis deeply impli-cated with underlyingassumptionsabout the human subject, divine beings,and the ways theircapacitiesandagencies differ. At the same time, religionsface chronic dilemmasposed by the tensions between transcendenceand thesituatedand concretenatureof verbalpractices.So muchdependson these as-sumptionsand tensions thatmuchreligious debatedwells on linguistic forms(Bauman 1990; Bowen 1989, 1993; Ferguson 1985; Samarin1973). The re-view beginswith one commondenominatoramong manyvarieties of religiouslanguage,the problemsraisedby interactionwith invisible beings. It then ad-dresses linguistic form and pragmatics.The final two sections consider theemerging scholarly interest in entextualization and the dilemmas posed forpractitionersby otherworldlyauthorityandagency.Invisibilityand InteractionThatthepeculiarityof certainspeech situationscansupportreligious interpre-tation is famously evident in Augustine's conversion to Christianity(Augustine 1961, pp. viii, 6-10). Upon hearingthe words "takeandread,takeand read"(tolle lege, tolle lege) spoken in a "sing-song"voice by an unseenchild from the other side of a wall, Augustineunderstoodthem to be a com-mandfrom God.OpeningtheBible, he took thewordshe encountered o be an-othermoment of communication.Two featuresof the speechsituationpermit-ted this. First, the invisibility of the speaker allowed Augustine to wonderabout the true sourceof the words. Second, the fact thatwords writtenin onecontext can be takenup and readin anotherallowedhimto see himself as theiraddressee.This episodeillustrates he importancebothof participant olesandof the tension betweentext andcontextin understandinghe efficacy of relig-ious language.Moreover,the repetitivenessand assonance that drewAugusti-ne's attentionto the child's utterancehint at the power of linguistic form aswell.Suchspeech situationsare madepossible by generalpropertiesof languagethat allow otherwisenonperceptiblebeings to play a role in humansocieties,



5/26

50 KEANEinteractions hatsome scholarsview as defining religion (Boyer 1994). To theextentthatreligiondoes involve interactionwith invisible andintangible enti-ties (or even, say, visible butsilenticons), it poses certainpracticaldifficulties.This is implicit in Hanks's remark that "it is distortingto describe a sha-man... as acting alone simply because his spiritothers are nowherevisible tothe untrainedobserver"(1996a, p. 167). Invisibility, however, may pose di-lemmas for even the trainedobserver,as suggested in the words of a practitio-ner, which form the title to anethnographyof prayer:"Whereareyou spirits?"(Metcalf 1989).Religious speech situations can differ from the familiar parameters ofeveryday speech in several respects.In doing so, they can challenge ordinaryhabits as well as the theoreticalmodels of speech that are predicatedon them.If everyday conversation is a joint productionthat depends on the partici-pants sharingcertaindefaultassumptions(Hanks 1996a, p. 168;cf Sperber&Wilson 1995), such as who is participatingand what counts as the relevantcontext of "here"and"now," religious speech frequentlyoccurs in situationsin which those assumptionsmust be suspended (Howell 1994). In contrast othe face-to-face encounters of conversationanalysis, the presence, engage-ment,andidentityof spiritualparticipants n the speech event cannotalwaysbe presupposedor guaranteed.Prayeroften seeks to bring about interactionbetween humanbeings and other kinds of beings that would (or should) nototherwise occur (Atkinson 1989; Gill 1981; Hanks 1990, 1996a; McCreery1995; Shelton 1976). In some traditions,human beings must be reassuredbyauralmeans "that he ancestorsandspiritshave not forsakenus"(Peek 1994,p. 475). Even belief in the omnipresenceof divinity does not assure that onecan interactwith it (KH Basso 1990, Peacock & Tyson 1989). Spirits may bethe real audience,even of performancesnot explicitly directedto them as ad-dressees(Becker 1979, McDowell 1983), and evenpractitionerswho agreeonhow to pray may disagree on who their prayers actually address (Frisbie1980a).In contrast o everyday conversation,where such matterscan be tacitly as-sumed,addressing nvisible interlocutorsmay requirethat the participantsnthe speech event or even its location be clearlyreferred o (Gill 1981, Hanks1996a, McCreery 1995, Metcalf 1989, Schipper 1974, Thomas & Afable1994). The need to be explicit mayalso extendto the natureandpurposeof thespeechactbeingundertaken.Much of the content of spells andprayers s meta-pragmatic,thatis, it reflexivelyrefersto theveryactionsit is undertaking Sil-verstein1976;cf Jakobson1971). Onereason is presumably hat the supposedparticipantsdo not all share he samespatiotemporal ontext,or do not share tin quitethe same way. Metcalf observed of one Berawanprayerthathalf theverses are devotedto "trying o ensurethatthe recentlydeadmanwhom he ad-



6/26

RELIGIOUSANGUAGE 51dressesknows exactlywhatis happeningandwhy"(1989, p. 266). Suchmeta-pragmaticmeansmay help effect communicationwith the spirit worldor per-mit a textual world to direct concrete actions (Atkinson 1989, Bell 1987,Bowen 1993, Gill 1981, Hanks 1996a, Malinowski 1965, Sherzer1990, Tam-biah 1970). Some Gayo spells center on passages from the Qur'anthat de-scribe events in which certain powers were grantedto characters n the text(Bowen 1993). By reciting these passages, the speakermay obtainthose pow-ers in turn.This appears o workby recontextualizingnarrativesas metaprag-matic statements:Their linguistic form remainsthe same, but their functionshifts. Rather hanbeing construedas accountsof actions thatwere carriedoutin the past, the wordsaretakenas reportson and directives for the action theythemselves carryout in the moment of speaking.

The problemof presenceis often compoundedby another eatureof other-worldly beings. If these beings aresufficientlytranscendent,hen the ordinarymeansby whichpeople speakof orto entitiesin the world of everyday experi-ence may be ruled out in principle. Some traditions, fearing hubris or blas-phemy, index the transcendenceof divinity by enjoining name avoidance orcircumlocution Janowitz1989, 1993). Reflexive reference to the very prohi-bitionitself-e.g. the "unspokenname"(Keane 1997a,p. 131)-may serve torefer to a deity. As fully developed-for example, in negative theology andmany mysticaltraditions-the conceptof transcendence eadsto the dilemmathateven to say that the divine lies beyond discourse is alreadyto reduce it todiscursive form, which should therefore be eschewed (Clooney 1987, Lopez1990, Sells 1994, Wright 1993;cf Katz 1992). The divine maybe avoidednotjust as an objectof discourse.Accordingto some Jewishtraditions, he powerof the divine name lies in the fact that,because the deityHimselfutters t, it is"themost importantoken"of divine speech (Janowitz1989, p. 85; 1993). Theprohibitionon speakingthe divine name thuspreventshumanbeings frompre-sumingto take on a speakingpartreservedforGod.Prohibitionmayalso servenot only to protectthe speakers romotherworldlydangers, tmayalso servetobound off anentire sacred code fromthe effects of secular contexts(Kroskrity1992). To protect he statusof Hebrew n Israel,where it is also thelanguage ofsecularaffairs,UltraorthodoxJews will not speakit outside liturgicalsettings(Glinert& Shilhav 1991, Kantor 1992). From a pragmaticperspective, thispreservesthepresupposition hatany actualinstanceof speakingHebrew willin fact be sacred.Most religioustraditions,however, do requirepractitioners o engage withthe invisible worldin somerespect,andthey providethe linguisticmeans to doso. What ntheir own speechactivities enablespeople tohave interactionswithdivine or spiritbeings? Whereinlies the efficacy of religious language?An-swering these questions requires examination of formal characteristicsof



7/26

52 KEANEspeech performanceand the explicit beliefs or implicit assumptions that ac-companythem.

FormSome of the richest work onreligious languagecan be divided into that whichfocuses on meaningand thatwhich focuses on form, thoughthe two are usu-ally closely linked. Studiesthatfocus on meaning,especially as conveyed bymetaphor Calame-Griaule1986; Fernandez1982, 1986;Wagner 1986;Wei-ner 1991;Witherspoon 1977), tend to stress the richnessand polyvalent quali-ties of religious language (althoughoften only accordingto semantic content).Conversely,studies of formoftenascribeto ritual anguagea certainsemanticpoverty.HereI concentrateon questionsof form, which have been more cen-tral to those interested n verbalpractices per se.It is unusualforreligiouslanguagenot to bear some formalmarksof its spe-cial character.Even the so-called plain speech of Quakers s recognizable bycertainstylistic features(Bauman1990, Irvine1982, Maltz 1985;cf Coleman1996). Inherpioneeringwork,Reichard 1944) soughtthe"compulsive" orceof Navajo prayerin its formal patterns.Developing the theme, Gill (1981)claimedthat t is a generalcharacteristicof the languageof prayer hat ts repe-tition and formal elaborationare far out of proportion o the message, con-struedas denotation.One evident functionof this elaboration,he proposes, isto signal a special frame of interpretation.Virtually any means, includingchanges in phonology, morphology, syntax, prosody, lexicon, and entirelin-guistic code can framea stretchof discourseas religious. Shifts in phonologycan mimic shifts in languagecode. I have observed IndonesianChristians akeon Arabic-inflectedpronunciations o index the religious (albeitnot Muslim)characterof a speech event. Linguisticform is multifunctional,however, andsuch devices arelikely to entailmore than ust a shift of frames. Forexample,whenpractitioners f local religionsin the Indonesianbackcountry ake wordsfrom theprayersof their Muslimneighbors,they arealso tryingto tapinto thepowerheld by politically dominantgroupsand to claim some of the statusas-sociated with spatiallydistantsources of knowledge (Atkinson 1989, Metcalf1989, Tsing 1993).A useful summaryof characteristicscommonly found in ritual speech isprovidedby Du Bois (1986). Du Bois's list can be dividedintofeaturesof per-formanceand of text, andanassociatedbelief thatritualspeechreplicateshowthe ancestorsspoke.Theperformance eaturesconsist of markedvoice quality,greaterfluency relative to colloquial speech, stylized and restricted intona-tional contours, gestalt knowledge (speakersoften learn texts as a whole andcannot recite them in parts), personal volition disclaimer (creditinga tradi-



8/26

RELIGIOUSANGUAGE 53tional source forone's words),avoidanceof first and secondpersonpronouns,and mediationthrough several speakers. Du Bois argues that these featurestend to shift apparentcontrol over speech from the individual proximatespeaker, who is bodily presentat the moment of speaking,to some spatially,temporally,or ontologically more distant agent (see also Urban 1989). Thisshift of controlandthusresponsibility s reinforcedby the textualfeatures, n-cluding the use of aritualregister(different exical items for the samewordsincolloquial andritualspeech), archaisticelements (includingwords andgram-matical forms that speakersbelieve to be archaic),elements borrowedfromother languages, euphemism and metaphor, opaqueness of meaning, andsemantic-grammaticalparallelism (the latter having inspired an especiallylarge literature,e.g. EB Basso 1985, Boyer 1990, Fox 1975, 1988, Gossen1974, Jakobson1960, Keane 1997a,Kratz1994, Kuipers 1990, Sherzer1990,Urban 1991).Boyer (1990) proposedto explain the special forms takenby ritualspeechon the grounds that listeners always assume that those forms are somehowcausedby their divine sourcesandarethusevidence of theworkingsof forcesthat areotherwise imperceptible.Du Bois's survey of ritual speech, however,suggests that the authorityritualspeech holds for its hearersneed not requireus to attribute mplicit theories of causality to them. The formal propertieslisted above have such effects as playing down the indexicalgroundingof ut-terancesin the context of the specific speech event, increasingthe perceivedboundednessandautonomouscharacterof certain stretches of discourse,anddiminishingthe apparent ole of the speaker'svolitional agency in producingthem.Theresulting decenteringof discourse (Bauman& Briggs 1990; Silver-stein & Urban1996a, p. 15),canencourage heperception hatthe words comefrom some sourcebeyondthepresent context.Forexample,each recitationofZuniprayershould be an exact repetitionof words "according o the firstbe-ginning" (Bunzel 1932a, p. 493). But the participants'sense thatsuchprayersdo indeedrepeatprimordialwords need not relymerelyon theiracceptanceofsome explicit doctrine.Rather, he decenteringeffects producedby the formalpropertiesof prayershelp support his belief as an intuition that is reinforcedby each performance.A second influentialapproach ocuses on sociopoliticaleffects of linguisticform. One version of this approachbuilds on Durkheim's observation(1915;cf Briggs 1988, Kratz1994) thatritualformcancreatea unified congregationby regimentingvocal andbodily movementsand,by its emotionaleffects, maytransform ndividuals'subjectivestates (Davis 1985, George 1996, Goodman1972, Lawless 1988, Maltz 1985, Nelson 1985, Pitts 1993,Roseman 1991, Ti-ton 1988).Anotherapproach ooks at how linguisticform can restrictaccess tothe circulationof discourse(Briggs 1993,McDowell 1983,Urban1996;cfKH



9/26

54 KEANEBasso 1990). To the extent thattheiruse demands esotericknowledge, relig-ious speechgenres orlexicons canbecome scarceresources(Bledsoe &Robey1986,Carpenter1992,Frisbie1980a, Irvine 1989,Lindstrom1990). Theirdis-tinctive aesthetic and semantic character s then sometimes projected ontothose who command them. Those who customarily speak refined or sacredwordsmaythemselvesbe creditedwith essentialqualitiesof refinementor sa-credness(Bourdieu1991, Buckley 1984).If those who emphasize metaphorare often inclined to see religious lan-guage as richerthanordinary peech,anotherapproach ees it as moreimpov-erished. Bloch (1975, 1989) claimedthatthe formalstructureof ritualspeechleads to diminished propositional meaning and in other ways restricts therange of what can be said (cf Rappaport1979). By these effects, highly formalspeech comes to serve the perpetuationof authority.Bloch has drawncriti-cism, both for his account of languageand for the conclusions he draws fromit, even from some who concur with aspects of his thesis (Boyer 1990,McDowell 1983). Formality,redundancy,andrepetitionare not incompatiblewith semanticmeaning(Briggs 1988, Janowitz1989). As Gill (1981) pointedout, formality only looks noncreative when we take texts in isolation ratherthan as componentsof largeractions. In a fundamental hallengeto Bloch, Ir-vine (1979) showed that he hadgroupedtogethera heterogeneousset of prop-erties underthe rubric of formality,conflating linguisticproperties,kinds ofevents, andaspectsof social order,when demonstrably ormalityof one doesnot necessarilyfollow fromthe other. Thus, rigidpoetic canonsmay correlatewith political hierarchy but leave performers powerless (Metcalf 1989),whereas flexible speechnorms in relatively egalitarian ocieties mayreinforceindividualdifferences of social status (Atkinson 1989). We needto be careful,then, aboutwhat aspectof society is being correlatedwith the formalityof itsritual speech (Brenneis& Myers 1984).Few would be willing to claim that the linguistic andpragmaticpropertiesof ritual speech are without effect. A third approachhas been to link theseproperties o theactions thatritualspeechis supposedto undertake. n an influ-entialpaper,Silverstein(1981) arguedthatritualspeech is persuasivein partbecause of themutuallyreinforcingways inwhich its form,atmultiple linguis-tic levels, serves as a metapragmaticigurefor theaccomplishmentof the suc-cessive stages of the action being undertaken.For example, the sequence ofverbs in Navajo prayersmoves from plea for expected futureactions to de-scriptionof actions taking place to descriptionof result of accomplishedac-tions (Gill 1981;cf Vitebsky 1993). Thus,over the course of the actualtime ofthe speech event the portrayalof time by the grammatical ense system shifts,until finally the outcome is implicitly taken to be somethingalreadyaccom-plished.



10/26

RELIGIOUSANGUAGE 55Suchanalysesfocus on the effects of form on the consciousness of hearers,speakers,or readers.The forms takenby ritual speech also reflect the partici-pants' assumptionsaboutagencyoraboutwhatis required o communicateef-

fectively across (or even talkabout) (Wright 1993) the semiotic and ontologi-cal gap between humanbeings and invisible interlocutors Gill 1987). If hu-manbeings cannotbe sure theiraddresseessharethe same language,wordlesssong (EB Basso 1985) may be the best way to communicatewith them;con-versely, spiritsmaymanifest theirpresence by producingunintelligiblesounds(Hinton 1980) or changes in voice quality (Howell 1994, Irvine 1982, Schief-felin 1985) in possessed humanbeings. When people use a sacredlanguage,such as Arabic, they may debate mattersof pronunciationn the effortto repro-duce the sound of revelation(Nelson 1985). Sonic form itself can be seen as di-vine (Alper 1988, Buckley 1984, Dusenbery 1992, JD Hill 1993, Janowitz1993, Lopez 1990, Sullivan 1988, Witherspoon1977). If theutteranceof man-tra is tantamount o divine presence (Staal 1990), the speaker'sintention andsemanticintelligibilitybecome irrelevant.Conversely,those who receive partof theirscripture n translation e.g. from Hebrew to the Greekof some earlyChristians) may find the "spirit"to lie in semantics, in contrast with the"fleshly" linguistic form(Janowitz 1993, p. 400; cf Stock 1996).At issue in the formal characterof religious language,therefore,arenotjustaesthetic, emotional,or social functions,but also assumptionsaboutwho is ac-tually speakingandlisteningin any given speechevent.Closely boundup withthese are local assumptionsabouthow languageworks. Thesequestionscan beaddressed n turn as problemsof intentionality,participantroles, and author-ship.IntentionalityandResponsibilityThe meansby which humanbeings communicatewith invisiblebeings tendtoreflect underlyingassumptionsabout the natureof these beings, of the humansubject, and of the social relations between them (Buckley 1984, Bunzel1932a,Gossen 1974, Rosaldo 1982). In some traditionsprayersareshapedbyhumandeferencetowardthe beings addressed Robson 1994); others,like theZuni, "donot humble themselvesbefore the supernatural;hey bargainwith it"(Bunzel 1932b, p. 618). Some forms of speech seek to persuade, flatter,orplease the listener(Calame-Griaule1986) or influence the spirits by display-ing the speaker's privileged knowledge of their names or origins (Atkinson1989, Bowen 1993, Lambek1981, Sherzer1990). It is precisely the assump-tions about the participants mplicit in linguistic form that are often at issuewhen religiousreformersseek to transformor forbidcertainspeech practices.One complaintby reformers s that if God is all-powerful,thencajolingwords



11/26

56 KEANEare arrogant,and magical words-to the extent that they seek to act directlyupon their addressee-a denial of divine agency. Another complaint is thatpersuasive words that seem to be addressed to offerings, sacralia, or altarsthereby nappropriatelympute subjectivity o an inanimate istenerand areef-fectively a form of fetishism (Keane 1996).Similar concernsaboutthe role of speakersas agentive, volitional, andin-tending subjectsanimatedebatesin the academicstudyof language.Religiouslanguage raises difficulties, for example, for the view that the meaning of ut-terancesdependson the listener's construalof the speaker's intentions (Grice1957, Sperber& Wilson 1995). Do shamans or worshippers necessarily ad-dressbeings from whom they expect recognition of theirintentions?Do glos-solalia (Goodman1972, Samarin1972), the use of a language unknownto theaddressee (Bauman 1990), or other esoteric or unintelligible speech (Hinton1980)communicateanintention,andif so, whose? Must I impute ntentions ospiritswhen seeking signs from them in return?In collective worship, mustevery participant hare the same intentions or assumptionsaboutwhat is hap-pening?Religiouspracticeshaveplayeda central oleinscholarly fforts ounderstandlanguageas a formof action(Malinowski1965;cf Lienhardt 961, p. 238), nota-bly under the influence of Austin's conceptof speech acts (Austin 1975; seeAhem 1979;Du Bois 1992; Finnegan 1969;Gill 1981, 1987; Rappaport1979;Tambiah1979;Wheelock1982). Models of action ypicallyrequire omeaccountof actors' ntentions;orexample, nthe case of language, hose of speakers',as isevident n Searle's 1969)versionof speechacttheory.Inresponse,ethnographiccounterexamples-largely drawn from ritual contexts-have been adducedagainst he modelsof speechthatgive centralplaceto theintentionalityf individ-ual speakers Duranti1993, Rosaldo 1982). In his debate with Searle,Derrida(1982)stressed hedegree o whichlanguage s independent f theintentions f itsspeakers.What Derridacalls the iterabilityof languagemeans thatbecauseanygivenutterancemustdrawon apreexisting inguistic ystemand huscanneverbefullydetermined yorconfined othespecificcircumstancesn whichit isuttered,it is alwaysvulnerable o beingtakenout of context,beingcitedratherhanused,taken njest rather han n seriousness,and so forth.Derridacan be criticized oroverlooking he social character f speech,becauseover the courseof agivenin-teractionparticipantsend to worktogether o limitthepossible interpretationsftheirutterancesBorker1986,Brenneis1986,Duranti& Brenneis1986,Tedlock& Mannheim1995).Inmany religiousspeechsituations,however,thepossibili-ties for such interactivework arehighlyrestricted:Becausethespiritsare not fullcoparticipantsntheshapingof meaning nthe sameway othersortsof conversa-tionpartners re,the ambiguitiesdue to language's terability an be especiallyprominent.



12/26

RELIGIOUSANGUAGE 57Du Bois (1992) argued hatdivinationworks by suppressingspeaker nten-tionality, distinguishingbetweenthe propositionalcontentof questions formu-lated by humanbeings and the pragmatic orce carriedby the oracle's answers.

By restricting mputed ntentionality o only one componentof the communi-cative event, divinationallows people to avoid responsibilityfor what is said.Still, Du Bois's analysis appears to take intentionality to be the default as-sumption n speech and fails to explain why suppressionof intentions shouldbe more successful thanthe ascriptionof intentions o, say, oraculardevices orhiddenspirits (for an alternativeapproach,see the following section).Speaker intentionalityis a central issue in the debates among IndonesianMuslims discussed in detail by Bowen (1989, 1993). Some modernists de-mand that believers praywith sincere intentionsby utteringthe words with a"powerfuldepictive imagination"of theirgoal (1993, p. 84). As this exampleshows, intentionalitycan be crucial even when the words used arehighly for-mulaic and thus not subjectto manipulationby speakers.As anelementof par-ticular language ideologies (culturally specific assumptions about the rela-tions between languageform andfunction) (Woolard 1992), the conceptof in-tentionalitycanproduceeffects in its own right.SwedishEvangelicals, forex-ample, emphasize the intentionalityof the individual speaker.According toStromberg (1993), however, because speech can express unacknowledgedaims,therewill be occasions of stress whenthey find themselvessaying thingsthey have not consciously meant.To explain such utterances,which their lan-guage ideology rendersmysterious, they ascribe them to divine agency. Simi-larly, Catholic Charismatics ell roundsof stories that oftendevelopathematicunity over the courseof a gathering.Because the collective product s outsidethe volition of any particularstoryteller,the participantstake this unity tomanifest the presenceof a single divine source (Szuchewycz 1994; cf Borker1986). This conclusion seems to be predicated on their assumptionthat anyagency that lies beyond the level of the individual is not likely to be human.The role of intentionalityacrossthe range of known speech practices remainssubjectto debate.But these examples show that any theoryof intentionsmustconsider both extraordinary nteractions and the mediatingrole of languageideologies.ParticipantRolesIn Du Bois's view, divinatoryproceduresworkin partby distributing espon-sibility for differentcomponentsof speech amongthe severalparticipants nthe communicativeevent. Notice, however, that whatDu Bois takesto be thesuppressionof individual ntentionalitycan also be described as an expansionof thepresupposedspeaking subjectbeyond the level of the individual(Keane1997a)anda fosteringof collaborativeauthorshipandinterpretationBrenneis



13/26

58 KEANE1986, Lambek 1981). This expansioncan be effected throughthe elaborationof participant oles. Erving Goffman(1981, cf Irvine 1996) distinguishedsev-eral roles involvedin speechevents, includingtheprincipal who bears respon-sibility for what is said, the author who formulatesthe actual words, the ani-matorwho uttersthem, the proximaladdressee of the utterance, he target towhomthe words areultimatelydirected,and theoverhearer.Totreata spiritasthe addresseeof words is to impute to it a differentsort of presence,and per-haps agency, than thatof anoverhearer.Roles that can be held in combinationby one person may also be distributedamongseveral incumbents e.g. priestswho, in the name of ritualsponsors,utter words attributed o spiritauthors).Distributionof roles may serve to displace responsibilityawayfrom particularindividualsor diffuse it among many. Elaborationsof participantroles mayhelp invoke sources of authority hat are not limited to the perceptiblehere andnow, so that,forinstance,the speech event makes plausible the presenceof in-visible and inaudiblespirits(Hanks1996a). Religious belief thusfinds supportin the concrete formsof speechpracticesas muchby whatthey presupposeasby whatthey depict.If some speechevents distributeparticipant oles amongmany persons,oth-ers combine severalroles in one physical individual(Hill & Irvine 1992, Sil-verstein & Urban1996a).This is evidentinpossession (Boddy 1994), inwhichthe deity or spiritandthe humanbeing both use the samebody, andin Pente-costal speakingin tongues or glossolalia (Goodman 1972, Maltz 1985, Muel-ler 1981, Samarin1972). Inpossession, however, linguistic formsmay not besufficient to determinewhat being has entered the scene (Goodman 1972,Whyte 1990), or for thatmatter,whether he speaker s simplyinsane:The ulti-mate decision may be determinedas much by the politics of interpretation sby the characterof the speech (Irvine 1982).An important indof religious ransformationonsistsof takingon a new roleas speaker.The conversionnarrative f preacherss often about he call topreach(Titon 1988),and full conversionmayentailbeingtransformedromthe listenerto the speaker n acts of "witnessing" Harding1987,Lawless 1988,Peacock &Tyson 1989,Titon 1988)or developing"attunement" ith a teacher'sdiscoursepatterns Trix 1993).As suchstudiesshow, the speaker'sreligious dentity s ap-proachednot only or most usefully as an object of discourse (as in the "life-history"),but also as aninhabitable peakingrole(Kratz1994,McDowell 1983),with all the discursiveand moralpossibilities hatmayentail.AuthorshipThe analysis of participantroles calls into questionwho counts as presentinany given event, andto whom the wordsmanifestedin any event are to be at-tributed.Ofparticular mportance n manysituations s the questionof author-



14/26

RELIGIOUSANGUAGE 59ship. Onespeech genrein a singleritualcanencompass quite differentkindsofauthors;anEpiscopalservice canincludeprayerswhose sourcesareboth local(thatforCongress) and divine (theLord's Prayer,as taughtby Christ).In Boy-er's (1990) hypothesis, listenerstakethe specialforms of ritualspeech to indexa divine source.The hypothesis, however, does not fully accountfor the roleplayed by the human animatorwho utters words imputed to otherworldyauthorsor principals.Oftenparticipantsareprimarily nterested n the socialrelationships along which speech is transmitted rom otherworld o manifestactors.Shamans,for instance, are commonly said to develop individual rela-tionships with spiritswho then provide them with songs or chants(Atkinson1989;Briggs 1993;LRGraham1995;Hanks 1990,1996a; Howell 1994;Lam-bek 1981;Roseman 1991; Sullivan 1988). For listeners who areaware of this,the performance tself will be sufficient to index the existence of the relation-ship, and the relationship n turnprovidesthe warrant or the performance. naddition,the efficacy of ritual or sacredspeech may stem from the fact that itoriginatesfromthose to whom it speaks, somethingthatgives the speakerspe-cial authorityorpersuasiveness,orplacesthe listenerunderspecial obligations(Bledsoe & Robey 1986, Briggs 1993).When he author f words s distinct rom heiranimator,elationships etweenthe two candisplaysignificantvariation.YucatecMayanshamans eceivespeechin dreamsor fromothershamans,but each individual ontinues o "beautify"hisspeechthroughout lifetime, eadingHanks o ask "whatkindof speakers this?"(1996a, p. 161-62). Waraoshamans eceivechants n dreams hatare nducedbytobaccothathas been receivedfromanolder shaman Briggs 1993).Inthis case,the chantappears o indextwo sources,both the spirit'sauthorship of linguisticforn) andthe teacher'sauthorizationof pragmatic apacity).Distinctionsamongparticipantoles can havepoliticalconsequences:Lawless(1988) argued hatdi-vinely inspired estimonyallows Pentecostalwomenin patriarchalommunitiesto exert nfluence hatwouldnotbe available o them weretheyto claimfull re-sponsibility or their words. Howell (1994) correlateddistinctionsof authorshipwithsociopoliticalprinciples.Whereas he egalitarianChewongtreatspiritsandshamans scoproducers f thetext,ritual peakers f the morehierarchical io arenotsupposed o innovate see alsoAtkinson 1989, Metcalf1989). What hese ex-amplesshow is thatthe handlingof imputedauthorshipmay havemoregeneralimplications or local assumptionsaboutagency.At one extreme, f words arecompulsivelyeffectiveinthemselves, henanyonewould be able touse them,re-gardlessof the speaker'spersonalcharacteror intentions,and without conse-quences orpersonal tatus-unless, likeearlyQuakers, neis thechosenbutrela-tivelyemptyreceptacle orGod's words(Bauman1990).At the otherextreme, fone's words aresupposedlyonly one's "own voice"(Metcalf1989),the speakertakes on considerable esponsibility nd risk.



15/26

60 KEANEA single performancecanmanifesta rangeof speakercontrol and a varietyof presumedpresences andactors, visible and invisible. Many ritualstake ad-vantageof this "heteroglossic"variabilityby undergoing,for example, a shift

over performance ime from whatBakhtin(1981) called relatively "dialogic"toward more "monologic" and authoritative peech forms (Kuipers 1990). Intheprocess, the identity of thepresupposedauthorcan shift by degrees alongawide spectrum.Forexample, Baptist preacherswork towarda climacticstagemarked by a staggered stanzapatterncreated by breath groups bounded byaudible gasps or nonsense syllables (Pitts 1993; cf Davis 1985, Rosenberg1970, Titon 1988). Participants ake this finalstage to be evidence of the divinespeakingthrough he preacherbecause "no mortalcouldpossibly projectsucha designso farin advance,and so consistently,uponwhatappears obe sponta-neous speech" (Pitts 1993, p. 165). When Xavante narrate heir dreams, ac-cordingto LauraGraham,pronoun use, alteredvoice quality,and other fea-turescome to identifythe speakerwith the spirits (LRGraham1995). This ex-emplifiesUrban's(1989; cfBesnier 1995, JD Hill 1993,Kroskrity1992,Law-less 1988) thesis thatduringaperformance,animatorscan shift betweenfullerand lesser identificationwith the narrated peaker,positioningthemselves ascommentatorson the spirits,who therebyremainrelatively absent from thepresentevent,orperformingas a spirit,therebybringingtheirworldrelativelyclose to thepresent,while also distancing he speaker rom theself of everydayspeech.A shift inpresumedauthorentails a shift in the animator'srelationshipto his or herwords.Fallingshort of full possession, in which one socially rec-ognized identity can supplant the other, is what Hymes (1981) called the"breakthrough" y which a speaker may shift from report(takingsome dis-tance on his or her words) to performance(fully identifyingwith the role ofauthoritativeanimator,even if not that of author).Shifts nperformancemaythusrestructureelationsbetween hespeecheventand an otherworld.As a preacher hifts into divinely inspiredspeech,not onlydoesanotherworldlyuthorbecomepresentnthe contextof theparticularpeechevent,butthe speecheventmaycometobeprojectedntoanother, criptural,on-text (Davis 1985, Peacock& Tyson 1989). The relativedominanceof text andcontextcanvary,as showninBriggs's (1988) analysisof New MexicanCatholi-cism: WhereaseverydayBiblical allusionsbringscriptural assagesto bearon ahere-and-now ontextthat tselfremains he centerof attentioncf Meigs 1995),themassmay collapsethe distinctionbetweenBiblical text andritualcontext.QuotationBecause not every society provides explicit, doctrinal explanations of thesources of ritualwords, it may lie primarilywith linguistic form to make thespiritworldmanifest,inferable,orpresupposable or theparticipants. naddi-



16/26

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE 61tion to the linguisticandparalinguisticcues alreadynoted,one means of mak-ing evident that wordshave otherworldlysources is the use of quotation.Sha-manistic speech seems to fall ambiguouslybetween thatof priests and of thepossessed. The distinction lies in whetherperformance s taken to be a kind ofquotationor whether the spirits are speaking throughthe performer.Wordsthat areframedas reported peech cantherebybe portrayedas originatingout-side thepresentcontextin which they arebeing reported Buckley 1984). TheSufi teacher'sauthoritycomes in partfromanimating he words of others whohave actuallyseen the otherworld (Trix 1993). WhenBaptistshearthe voiceof the Spirit n the inwardself, theonly evidence lies in thepublicact of talkingabout it, a common reason for quoting divine speech (Titon 1988). Jewish,Christian,and Islamic scripturesaboundin reportedspeech of God (Wolter-storff 1995).The differentways in which the quotedwords are framedby the quotingspeech can have entailments for their respective authority.What is quotedmightbe the originalmomentin which the words were received (LR Graham1995), previous performances Hanks 1996a, Howell 1994), or words formu-lated by other participants n the same speech event. Because the reportedspeech given in the rabbinic text analyzed by Janowitz(1989; cf Trix 1993)consists of past didactic dialogues, the reader,as addressee of that reportedspeech, becomes one more link in the chain of transmission.Simultaneously,the authorityof those words is displayed by quotation rames that show themto have their origins in the past. The relations between quoter and quotedspeakermaybe subjectto contestationand historicalreconfiguration.Accord-ing to William Graham (1977, 1987), early Islam did not differentiate theauthorityof divine words and the propheticwords ascribed to Muhammed.The divinewords foundintheQur'anarequotation,God's wordsframedas re-portedin the words of the Prophet. Conversely, the Prophet'swords bear di-vine authorityas utterancesof God's appointed. Subsequentefforts to distin-guish "prophetic peech"from"revelation"n effect sharpen heboundarybe-tween authorandanimator,and thus betweenreported ext andreportingcon-text, thereby keeping the original prophecy at a greater, potentially moreauthoritative, emove fromsubsequentevents.Whatdistinguishesdirect from indirectquotationis the purportedresem-blanceof form between thewords as they occurred nthe original speecheventand their reoccurrence n the subsequent, quoting, speech event (Volosinov1973). Incontrastwith directquotation, ndirectquotationgrants o thepersonreporting he originalwordsresponsibilityfor interpretinghemfrom the per-spective of the subsequent speech event (Lucy 1993). Whereasdirectquota-tion separatesanimator the person doingthe quoting)fromauthor the personbeing quoted),indirectquotationcombinesthe two roles (becausethe person



17/26

62 KEANEdoing the quoting ndicatesthattheoriginalwords havebeen rephrased),whilestill locating the principal-the speaker responsible for the original utter-ance-in some previous context. Consequently,people often feel direct quota-tionto be more deferential o theoriginalspeakerbecauseitmaintainsa clearerdistinction between the voices of quoted and quotingspeakers,does not pre-sume to interpretanother'swords,and does not superimpose he speaker'sin-dexical frameof referenceonto thatof the originalspeechevent(Hanks 1996b,p. 211; cf Urban 1989). Volosinov points out thatsuch differencesin formre-flect the relative authorityof the reported words and their authors: "Thestronger he feeling of hierarchicaleminence in another'sutterance, he moresharplydefinedwill its boundariesbe, andthe less accessiblewill itbe topene-trationby reportingand commentingtendencies fromoutside"(1973, p. 123).As William Graham's (1977) discussion of propheticspeech suggests, how-ever, direct quotationcan also come to identifyanimatorwith author.For ex-ample, Janowitz (1989) arguedthat the hymns given by a rabbinicascent textare supposed to be identicalto the words sung by angels in heaven. Becausethese hymns are replicasof angelic speech, thehumanbeing who recitesthemin effect joins the heavenly chorus, "collapsingthe distancebetween heavenandearth" p. 91). Differences in how reportedspeech is framedareevidencefora rangeof ways in which the animator s thought o benefitfrom oridentifywith the divine sources of the reportedwords (Irvine 1996, p. 150; Meigs1995; Urban 1989). Thus, questions about religious authorityandritualeffi-cacy can demand a closer examinationof the relations between text andcon-text.Entextualizationand ContextualizationAs the questionof authorshipdemonstrates, here is a wide rangeof formsbywhich speech can manifest thepresenceof divine or spirit beings in concreteevents or cast particularcircumstances as instances of eternal or originarytruths.This variation can be seen in terms of agency, as shown above, anditcan also be viewed in relationto the definition andtransformation f context(Schieffelin 1985,Wheelock 1982).Theemphasison thetextualaspectsof rit-ual is, more specifically, partof a growing scholarlyinterestin the particularways by which the transformation f context comes about,anda move awayfrom an earlier anthropological endency to privilege "face-to-face" nterac-tion andoral performance Blackburn1988, Boyarin 1993). A key concept isentextualization,"theprocessof renderingdiscourseextractable,...[so that]itcanbe lifted outof its interactional etting"(Bauman& Briggs 1990, p. 73; cfSilverstein& Urban1996b).Thisprocesscan be affectedby anything hatem-phasizes the internalcohesion andautonomyof a stretchof discourse, permit-



18/26

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE 63ting it to form a text (whetheroral orwritten)thatis perceivedto remaincon-stantacross contexts (Bauman& Briggs 1990). The process can include lin-guistic andperformancedevices, suchas the formalfeatures isted by Du Bois(1986), thatdiminishthe speaker'scontroloverthe utterance.Entextualizationis thus anubiquitous eatureof languageuse [cfJakobson's (1960) poetics andDerrida'snotion of iterability].Forexample,it is one meansby which anima-torcan be distinguishedfromauthor,because it permits stretchesof discourseto be removedfromone context andresituated n anotheras reportedspeech.Note, however, that text is one moment in a dialectical process throughwhich wordsundergobothcontextualizationand entextualization Bell 1987).(Re)contextualization, he (re)insertionof text into a context, may, for exam-ple, take the form of reading aloud, reciting formulaicverse, or quoting an-other's words (Becker 1983, Boyarin 1993, Janowitz 1993, Meigs 1995, Sil-verstein 1996). Whenscriptures believed to report he actualwords of divinerevelation,theact of readingaloudeffectively closes the circuitfromutterancein context to written text and back to utteranceagain (Janowitz 1989, pp.102-3). To the extent that a scriptural ext merges with a context, it can betakenas making divinity present(Nelson 1985, Peacock& Tyson 1989).Reci-tations,however,often retain some marked inguisticorperformance eatures(Blackburn1988, Rabin1976, Silverstein 1996), which testifies to theirpersis-tentconnection to and differencefrom theprior-and distant-context. Thus,to the extent thatperformancepermitsa distinctionbetween text andcontexttoremainperceptible (e.g. by reading with an exaggeratedmonotone), it pro-vides materialsubstantiationor theparticipants'ntuitionsthatthepresent n-teractionstandsoutagainstamoreauthoritative ourcethatis in someway ab-sent (Besnier 1995, George 1996, Valentine 1995). Therelation,however,be-tweentext and contextcanalso be understoodas an instance of apervasivedi-lemma formany religions,thatthe divine is inpracticeentangledwiththe con-crete humanacts it should transcend Lopez 1990, Lutgendorf1991, Nelson1985). Groupsthatseek immediateaccess to divinitytendto be suspicious ofany overtlytextualmediation,includingnot only actual written artifactssuchas prayerbooksornotes (Bauman1990, Maltz 1985, Peacock & Tyson 1989,Pitts 1993, Stock 1996, Titon 1988), but also memorized,formalized,or aes-thetically appealingwords, the use of which can be seen as inauthenticandidolatrous(Coleman 1996, Janowitz 1993, Keane 1997b, Nelson 1985, Prell1989).The concept of entextualizationmeansthatcontext is not the court of finalappealforany analysis,or something residualthatmustonly be takeninto ac-count.Rather,what is relevantto context-and even whether context is to beconsideredrelevant-is the result of ongoing social processes, genreexpecta-tions, andlanguageideologies. Because entextualization ends to decenterthe



19/26

64 KEANEevent (Bauman& Briggs 1990, p. 70), reorienting t arounda prioror other-wise absent origin, what counts as context becomes problematic.This wouldseem to supportBloch's (1989) contentionthatritual suppressesthis worldinfavorof the otherworldly.Ritual,however, need not serve only one function.To the extent that entextualizationand contextualization xist in a dialectic re-lation to each other, neither can serve as a final ground for analysis. Becauselanguage use moves between the poles of entextualizationand contextualiza-tion, speech events can also stress the boundarybetween text andcontext-aswhen ritual language remains ncomprehensible o listeners-maintaining theseparationbetween worlds. To the extent thattexts canmove acrosscontexts,they allow people to createthe image of somethingdurableand shared, nde-pendentof particular ealizationssuch asreadings, nterpretations, rperform-ances or their historicaltransformationsBarth 1990; Urban 1991, 1996). Oneeffect of the transportability f texts is the identificationof spatialwith tempo-ral distance: Local practitionersmay find the authorityof both the scripturesandthe practices they ordainto derivesimultaneously rom theirglobal reachandtheir ancient origins (Bledsoe & Robey 1986, Bowen 1993, Briggs 1988,Pitts 1993).Dilemmas of Belief andAgencyTheways in which differentreligious practiceshandle languagecanshed lighton some generaldilemmasof belief andagency.Oneimplicationfollows fromthe challenge these practicespose to any strongversionof linguisticdetermin-ism. Irvine (1982) arguedthat a diagnosis of spirit possession is never deter-mined directly by how the possessed person speaksbutrequiressome degreeof social negotiation.Otherspoint out thatlinguisticformalone cannot tell uswhat people take their words to be doing, where they believe those wordsoriginate,or even whether hey considerthe languageto be intelligible (Briggs1988; Irvine 1982, p. 243). Practitionershemselves mayremain n some doubtaboutthesematters Goodman1972).An important onsequenceof theunder-determinedrelationshipbetween linguistic formand function is thatexistingritualformscan take on new functionsandmeanings duringperiodsof relig-ious reform, n the name eitherof changeor of continuity(Bowen 1989, 1993;Keane 1995;Tambiah1979).A second implicationconcernsbelief. Academic discussionsof belief havetendedto presupposethe view characteristicof conversion-oriented eligions,thatone either believes or does not, and often that co-religionists can be as-sumed to possess a high degree of shared belief. But matters need not be soclear-cut:If linguistic form and functionarenotmechanicallyboundtogether,then particular practices need not require particularbeliefs (Boyer 1990,Favret-Saada1980). In fact, some languagepractices seem designedto permit



20/26

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE 65peopleto carryon withoutdemandinganexplanationof whatis happening DuBois 1992). Moreover,in contrastto Bloch's thesis thatritualspeech is suc-cessful only to the extent that it brooksno deviation, some religious speechpractices may be effective precisely because they can supportambivalent orcontradictorybeliefs in the practitioner.This is one implicationof Rafael's(1992) view that Tagalogspeechpractices n the confessional were simultane-ously ways of convertingto Catholicism andof fending off missionaries' de-mands forbelief. Ivy (1995), usingthepsychoanalyticmodelof thefetish, pro-poses thatJapanesespiritmediumsprovidemembersof ahighly industrializedsociety with the solace of communicationwith the dead without needing tofully persuadethem that such communicationhas been achieved.Religious languagealso raises questions aboutagency. In studiesof ritual,performance,andconversation,attentionhas increasinglyshiftedfromformalpatterns o theemergenceandnegotiationof meaningsover the courseof inter-action (Bauman& Briggs 1990, Kratz 1994, Schieffelin 1985, Silverstein &Urban1996b, Tedlock & Mannheim1995). Waryof the determinismallegedof some varietiesof structuralism, nalyticapproaches hatstress interactionoften give greatweight to the agency of participants.The problemof agencybecomes especially acute, however, in circumstances hataresupposedto in-volve otherworldlyagents, and in practicesthatimpose severe constraintsonthe humanpractitioner.Religious languagefrequentlyputs the role of the ap-parentperformers nto question and situates the more efficacious, moral, orliberatingagency in all sorts of other loci, such as sounds, canonicalwords,teachers,deities, divinatorymechanisms,congregations,orbooks.Thatlanguage practicespresuppose certain constructionsof agency helpsexplainwhy religiousreformmovementsgive so much attention o theproperuses of words. Reformersin several religions (Bauman 1990, Bowen 1993,Maltz 1985) often attackexisting speech practicesas eithergrantinghumanbeings too much agency (relativeto divine beings), or too little (relative tofalse idols orobjectifiedwords).Traditionalistsmayin turndefendthemselvesby asserting their superiorrespect for forebearsor accusing reformers,whoseek unmediatedaccess to the divine, of excessive pride.At stake is the rela-tionshipbetween the exteriorityof languageandits implicationsforthe interi-ority of speakers(Keane 1997b). As has often been observed, language canseem both deeply subjective (as an apparentmedium of innerthought),andeminentlysocial (as a preexistingsystem and a medium of communication).Those who stresssincerityor directaccess to divinity tendto be suspiciousoflanguage, o the extentthat ts concrete formsbearevidenceof its conventionalor social originsoutside the individualspeaker.Those who stressthe distanceor difficulty of access to the divine often lay greatweight on the mediatingpower or intersubjectivityprovidedby those same propertiesof language.In



21/26

66 KEANE

one view, speakersshouldshape their words;in another,sacredwords shouldoffer somethingto speakersthat they would not otherwise have. Implicit inthese differing stances is a broaderpoint, that humanagency is not alwayssomethingpeople wantentirelyto celebrateorclaim forthemselves;they maypreferto findagency in otherworlds.To the extent, however,thattheiraccessto other worlds is mediatedby language, it involves persistent tensions be-tween transcendenceandthepragmaticpresent.Those tensions sustainawiderange of certainties,ambivalences,and ambiguitiesandtherebykeep open ahost of historicalpossibilities.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSJohnLucy,AdelaPinch,MichaelSilverstein,andStephenF Teisergenerouslycommented on versions of this article. I thankJacqueline Fewkes, MatthewTomlinson, and JeremyWallach for researchassistance, and colleagues toonumerousto list here for references.

Visit the Annual Reviews homepage athttp://www.AnnualReviews.org.LiteratureCitedAhern EM. 1979. The problem of efficacy:strong and weak illocutionary acts. Man(NS) 14(1):1-17Alper HP, ed. 1988. UnderstandingMantras.Albany:SLUNY ressAsad T. 1993. Genealogies ofReligion:Disci-pline and ReasonsofPower in ChristianityandIslam. Baltimore/London: ohnsHop-kins Univ. PressAtkinson JM. 1989. The Art and Politics of

Wana Shamanship. Berkeley/Los Ange-les/Oxford: Univ. Calif. PressAustin JL. 1975. How to Do Things withWords. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniv.PressBakhtin MM. 1981. The Dialogic Imagina-tion: Four Essays, Transl.C Emerson,MHolquist, ed. M Holquist. Austin: Univ.Tex. PressBarth F. 1990. The guru and the conjurer:transactions n knowledge andthe shapingof culturein Southeast Asia and Melane-sia. Man 25:640-53Basso EB. 1985. A Musical Viewof the Uni-verse: KalapaloMythandRitualPerform-ances. Philadelphia:Univ. Penn. PressBasso KH. 1990. (1973). A WesternApache

writing system: the symbols of Silas John.In WesternApache Language and Culture:Essays in Linguistic Anthropology, pp.25-52. Tucson: Univ. Ariz. PressBaumanR. 1990. (1983). Let Your WordsbeFew: Symbolism of Speaking and Silenceamong Seventeenth-Century Quakers.Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland PressBaumanR, Briggs CL. 1990. Poetics andper-formance as critical perspectives on lan-guage and social life. Annu. Rev. Anthro-pol. 19:59-88Becker AL. 1979. Text-building, epistemol-ogy, and aesthetics in Javanese shadowtheatre.In TheImagination of Reality: Es-says in Southeast Asian Coherence Sys-tems, ed. A Yengoyan, AL Becker, pp.211-43. Norwood, NJ: AblexBecker AL. 1983. Biographyof a sentence: aBurmeseproverb. n Text,Play, andStory:The Construction and Reconstruction ofSelf and Society, ed. EM Bruner, pp.135-55. Washington, DC: Am. Ethnol.Soc.Bell C. 1987. Ritualizationof texts andthe tex-tualizationof ritual.Hist.Relig. 27:366-92Besnier N. 1995. Literacy, Emotion, and



22/26

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE 67Authority:Readingand Writingon a Poly-nesian Atoll. Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. PressBlackburn SH. 1988. Singing of Birth andDeath: Texts in Performance. Philadel-phia: Univ. Penn. PressBledsoe CH,Robey KM. 1986. Arabic literacyand secrecy among the Mende of SierraLeone. Man 21:202-26Bloch M. 1975. Introduction. nPolitical Lan-guage and Oratoryin TraditionalSociety,ed. M Bloch, pp. 1-28. New York: Aca-demicBloch M. 1989. (1974). Symbols, song, dance,and features of articulation: s religion anextreme form of traditionalauthority?InRitual, History, and Power: Selected Pa-pers in Anthropology, pp. 19-45. Lon-don/AtlanticHighlands,NJ:AthloneBoddy J. 1994. Spirit possession revisited: be-yond instrumentality.Annu. Rev. Anthro-pol. 23:407-34Borker RA. 1986. "Movedby the spirit":con-structingmeaning in a BrethrenBreakingof Bread service. See Duranti& Brenneis1986, pp. 317-37Bourdieu P. 1991. Language and SymbolicPower, ed. JB Thompson.Transl. G Ray-mond, MAdamson. Cambridge,MA: Har-vard Univ. Press

Bowen JR. 1989. Salait n Indonesia: the socialmeaning of an Islamic ritual. Man (NS)24:600-19Bowen JR. 1993. Muslims Through Dis-course: Religion and Ritual in Gayo Soci-ety. Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniv. PressBoyarin J. 1993. Voices aroundthe text: theethnographyof readingat Mesivta TiferethJerusalem. In The Ethnography of Read-ing, ed. J Boyarin, pp. 212-37. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. PressBoyer P. 1990. Tradition as Truthand Com-munication: A Cognitive Description ofTraditionalDiscourse. Cambridge:Cam-bridgeUniv. PressBoyer P. 1994. TheNaturalness of ReligiousIdeas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion.Berkeley:Univ. Calif. PressBrenneis DL. 1986. Shared territory: audi-ence, indirection and meaning. See Du-ranti & Brenneis 1986, pp. 339-47Brenneis DL, Myers FR. 1984. Introduction.InDangerous Words:Languageand Poli-tics in the Pacific, ed. DL Brenneis, FRMyers, pp. 1-29. New York: New YorkUniv. PressBriggs CL. 1988. Competence in Perform-ance: TheCreativityof Tradition nAMleyi-cano VerbalArt.Philadelphia:Univ. Penn.Press

Briggs CL. 1993. Generic versus metaprag-matic dimensions of Warao narratives:Who regiments performance? See Lucy1993, pp. 179-212Buckley T. 1984. Yoruk speech registers andontology. Lang.Soc. 13:467-88Bunzel RL. 1932a. Introduction o Zuni cere-monialism. Rep. Bur. Am. Ethnol., 47th,1929-1930. Washington, DC: Smithson.Inst. PressBunzel RL. 1932b. Zuni ritual poetry. Rep.Bur. Am.Ethnol., 47th, 1929-1930. Wash-ington, DC: Smithson. Inst. PressCalame-GriauleG. 1986. (1965). Wordsandthe Dogon World. Philadelphia: Inst.StudyHum. IssuesCarpenter D. 1992. Language, religion, andsociety: reflectionson the authorityof theVeda in India. J. Am.Acad Relig. 60(1):57-78Clooney FX. 1987. Why the Veda has noauthor: language as ritual in earlyM1ma sa and post-modern theology. J.Am.Acad Relig. 55(4):659-84Coleman S. 1996. Words as things: language,aesthetics and the objectification of Prot-estantevangelicalism.J. Mater. Cult. 1 1):107-28Davis GL. 1985. I Got the Word n Me and ICanSingIt, YouKnow:A Studyof the Per-formed African-AmericanSermon. Phila-delphia:Univ. Penn.PressDerridaJ. 1982. (1972). Signatureevent con-text. In Margins of Philosophy. Transl.ABass, pp. 307-30. Chicago:Univ. ChicagoPressDu Bois JW. 1986. Self-evidence and ritualspeech. In Evildentiality:The LinguisticCoding of Epistemology, ed. W Chafe, JNichols, pp. 313-36. Norwood,NJ:AblexDu Bois JW. 1992. Meaning without inten-tion: lessons from divination.See Hill &Irvine 1992, pp. 48-71DurantiA. 1993. Truth and intentionality:anethnographic critique. Cult. Anthropol.8(2):214-45DurantiA, Brenneis DL, eds. 1986. The audi-ence as co-author. Text6(3):239-347Durkheim E. 1915. TheElementaryForms oftheReligiousLife.Transl.JWSwain. Lon-don:George Allen & UnwinDusenberyVA. 1992. The word asGuru:Sikhscriptureand the translationcontroversy.Hist. Relig. 31(4):385-402Favret-SaadaJ. 1980. Deadly Words:Witch-craft in the Bocage. Transl. C Cullen.Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. PressFerguson CA. 1985. The study of religiousdiscourse. In Language and Linguistics:TheInterdependenceof Theory,Data, and



23/26

68 KEANEApplication, pp. 205-13. Washington,DC:GeorgetownUniv. PressFernandez JW. 1982. Bwiti. An Ethnographyof the Religious Imagination in Africa.Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniv. Press

FernandezJW. 1986. Persuasions and Per-formances: ThePlay of Tropesin Culture.Bloomington: IndianaUniv. PressFinnegan R. 1969. How to do things withwords:performativeutterancesamongtheLimbaof SierraLeone. Man4:537-52FoucaultM. 1980. The History of Sexuality,Vol. 1, An Introduction. Trans.R Hurley.New York:VintageFox JJ. 1975. On binary categories and pri-mary symbols: some Rotinese perspec-tives. In TheInterpretationof Symbolism,ed. RWillis, pp.99-132. London:MalabyFox JJ,ed. 1988. ToSpeakin Pairs: Essays onthe Ritual Languages of Eastern Indone-sia. Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. PressFrisbieCJ. 1980a. Ritual drama n the NavajoHouse Blessing ceremony. See Frisbie1980b, pp. 161-98Frisbie CJ, ed. 1980b. SouthwesternIndianRitualDrama. Albuquerque:Univ. N. M.PressGeertzC. 1973. (1966). Religion as a culturalsystem. In TheInterpretationof Cultures,pp. 87-125. New York: Basic BooksGeorgeKM. 1996.Showing Signs of Violence:The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual. Berkeley:Univ. Calif. PressGill SD. 1981. Sacred Words:A Study of Na-vajo Religion and Prayer (Contrib.Inter-cult. Compar. Stud., No. 4). Westport,CT/London:GreenwoodPressGill SD. 1987. NativeAmericanReligiousAc-tion: A Performance Approach to Relig-ion. Columbia,SC:Univ. S. C. PressGlinert L, Shilhav Y. 1991. Holy land, holy

language:a studyof UltraorthodoxJewishideology. Lang. Soc. 20:59-86GoffmanE. 1981. Footing. In Forms of Talk,pp. 124-59. Philadelphia: Univ. Penn.PressGoodmanFD. 1972. Speaking in Tongues:ACross-CulturalStudyin Glossolalia. Chi-cago: Univ. ChicagoPressGossen GH. 1974. To speak with a heatedheart: Chamula canons of style and goodperformance.In Explorations in the Eth-nography of Speaking, ed. R Bauman, JSherzer, pp. 389-413. Cambridge:Cam-bridgeUniv. PressGrahamLR. 1995. Performing Dreams: Dis-courses of Immortalityamong theXavanteof CentralBrazil. Austin: Univ. Tex. PressGraham WA. 1977. Divine Wordand Pro-

phetic Word in Early Islam: A Reconsid-eration of the Sources withSpecial Refer-ence to theDivineSaying or HadithQudsi.The Hague/Paris:MoutonGrahamWA. 1987. Beyond the WrittenWord:Oral Aspects of Scripture in theHisotry ofReligion. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.PressGrice HP. 1957. Meaning. Philos. Rev. 64:377-88Hanks WF. 1990. Referential Practice: Lan-guage and Lived Space among the Maya.Chicago:Univ. ChicagoPressHanks WF. 1996a. Exorcism andthe descrip-tion of participant oles. See Silverstein &Urban1996b, pp. 160-200Hanks WF. 1996b. Language and Communi-cative Practices. Boulder, CO: WestviewHarding SF. 1987. Convicted by the holyspirit: the rhetoricof fundamentalistBap-tist conversion.Am. Ethnol. 14(1):167-8 1Hill JD. 1993. Keepers of the Secret Chants:The Poetics of RitualPower in an Amazo-nian Society. Tucson: Univ. Ariz. PressHill JH, Irvine JT, eds. 1992. Responsibilityand Evidence in Oral Discourse. Cam-bridge: CambridgeUniv. PressHinton L. 1980. Vocables in Havasupaisong.See Frisbie 1980b, pp. 275-307Howell S. 1994. Singing to the spirits andpraying to the ancestors: a comparativestudy of Chewong and Lio invocations.1'Homme132, 34(4):15-34Hymes D. 1981. "In Vain Tried o Tell You":Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics.Philadelphia:Univ. Penn.PressIrvineJT. 1979. Formality and informality incommunicative events. Am.Anthropol.5:65 1-74Irvine JT. 1982. The creation of identity inspirit mediumship and possession. In Se-mantic Anthropology, ed. D Parkin, pp.241-60. London: AcademicIrvine JT. 1989. When talk isn't cheap: lan-guage andpolitical economy. Am.Ethnol.16(2):248-67IrvineJT. 1996. Shadow conversations: he in-determinacyof participantroles. See Sil-verstein & Urban 1996b, pp. 131-59Ivy M. 1995. Discourses of the Vanishing:Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago:Univ. ChicagoPressJakobsonR. 1960. Closing statement: inguis-tics and poetics. In Style in Language, ed.TA Sebeok, pp. 350-77. Cambridge,MA:MITPressJakobsonR. 1971. (1957). Shifter,verbal cate-gories, and the Russian verb. In SelectedWritings of Roman Jakobson, 2:130-47.The Hague:Mouton



24/26

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE 69JamesW. 1902. TheVarietiesofReligious Ex-perience: A Study in HumanNature.NewYork:LongmanGreenJanowitzN. 1989. Poetics of Ascent:TheoriesofLanguage in a RabbinicAscent Text.Al-

bany,NY: SUNY PressJanowitz N. 1993. Re-creating Genesis: themetapragmatics of divine speech. SeeLucy 1993, pp. 393-405KantorH. 1992. Currentrends n the seculari-zation of Hebrew.Lang. Soc. 21:603-9Katz ST, ed. 1992. Mysticismand Language.New York:OxfordUniv. PressKeane W. 1995. The spoken house: text, act,and object in easternIndonesia. Am. Eth-nol. 22:102-24Keane W. 1996. Materialism, missionaries,and modernsubjects in colonial Indonesia.In Conversion to Modernities: The Glob-alization of Christianity, ed. P van derVeer, pp. 137-70. New York:RoutledgeKeane W. 1997a. Signs of Recognition: Pow-ers and Hazards of Representation in anIndonesianSociety. Berkeley:Univ. Calif.PressKeane W. 1997b. Fromfetishism to sincerity:on agency, the speaking subject, and theirhistoricityin the context of religious con-version. Comp.Stud.Soc. Hist. In pressKratz CA. 1994. Affecting Performance:Meaning, Movement, and Experience inOkiek Women's Initiation. Washington,DC: Smithson.Inst. PressKroskrity PV. 1992. Arizona Tewa kivaspeech as a manifestationof linguistic ide-ology. Pragmatics 2:297-309KuipersJC. 1990. Power inPerformance: TheCreation of TextualAuthorityin WeyewaRitual Speech. Philadelphia:Univ. Penn.PressLambek M. 1981. HumanSpirits:A CulturalAccountof Trance nMayotte.Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. PressLawless EJ. 1988. Handmaidensof the Lord:Pentecostal WomenPreachers and Tradi-tional Religion. Philadelphia:Univ. Penn.PressLienhardtG. 1961. Divinity and Experience:TheReligion of theDinka.Oxford:Claren-donLindstromL. 1990. Knowledgeand Power ina SouthPacific Society. Washington,DC:Smithson.Inst. PressLopez DS. 1990. Inscribing the Bodhisattva'sspeech:on the HeartSutra 'smantra.Hist.Relig. 29:351-72Lucy JA, ed. 1993. ReflexiveLanguage: Re-ported Speech and Metapragmatics.Cam-bridge:CambridgeUniv. PressLutgendorfP. 1991. TheLife of a Text:Per-

forming the Ramacritmanas of Tulsidas.Berkeley:Univ. Calif PressMalinowski B. 1965. (1935). Coral Gardensand Their Magic (2): The Language ofMagic andGardening.Bloomington:Indi-ana Univ. PressMaltz DN. 1985. Joyful noise and reverentsi-lence: the significance of noise in Pente-costalworship.InPerspectives onSilence,ed. D Tannen, M Saville-Troike, pp.113-37. Norwood, NJ:AblexMcCreeryJL. 1995.Negotiatingwithdemons:the uses of magical language.Am.Ethnol.22(1): 144-64McDowell JH. 1983. The semiotic constitu-tion of Kamsaritual language.Lang. Soc.12:23-46Meigs A. 1995. Ritual language in everydaylife: theChristianright.J. Am.Acad.Relig.63(1):85-103Metcalf P. 1989. WhereAre YouSpirits?Styleand Theme in BerawanPrayer. Washing-ton, DC: Smithson.Inst. PressMueller T. 1981.A linguistic analysisof glos-solalia: a review article. Concordia Theol.Q.45:185-91Murray DW. 1989. Transposing symbolicforms: actorawarenessof languagestruc-tures in Navajo ritual. Anthropol. Ling.31(3-4): 195-208

Nelson K. 1985. The Art of Reciting theQur'an (Mod. Middle East Ser. No. 11).Austin:Univ. Tex. PressPeacock JL, Tyson RW. 1989. Pilgrims ofParadox: Calvinism and Experienceamong the Primitive Baptists of the BlueRidge. Washington, DC/London: Smith-son. Inst. PressPeek PM. 1994. The soundsof silence: cross-worldcommunicationandtheauditoryartsin African societies. Am. Ethnol. 21(3):474-94Pitts WF. 1993. Old Ship of Zion: TheAfro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora.New York/Oxford:Oxford Univ. PressPrell R. 1989. Prayer and Community:TheHavurah in American Judaism. Detroit:WayneStateUniv. PressRabin C. 1976. Liturgyandlanguagein Juda-ism. See Samarin1976, pp. 131-55RafaelVL. 1992. (1988). ContractingColoni-alism: Translationand ChristianConver-sion in TagalogSociety underEarlySpan-ish Rule. Durham, NC/London: DukeUniv. PressRappaportRA. 1979. The obvious aspects ofritual.InEcology, Meaning, and Religion,pp. 173-221. Berkeley: North AtlanticBooksReichard GA. 1944. Prayer: TheCompulsive



25/26

70 KEANEWord.Monogr.Am. Ethnol. Soc. 7. NewYork: AugustinRobson SO. 1994. Speaking to God in Java-nese. I'Homme132, 34(4):133-42Rosaldo MZ. 1982. The things we do withwords: Ilongot speech acts and speech acttheory in philosophy. Lang. Soc. 11:203-37Roseman M. 1991. Healing Sounds from theMalaysian Rainforest: TemiarMusic andMedicine. Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford:Univ. Calif. PressRosenbergBA. 1970. TheArt of the AmericanFolk Preacher. New York: Oxford Univ.PressSamarinWJ. 1972. Tongues of Men and An-gels: TheReligiousLanguageofPentecos-talism.New York:MacmillanSamarinWJ. 1973. Protestantpreachers n theprophetic line. Int. Yearb.Sociol. Relig.8:243-57SamarinWJ,ed. 1976. Language in ReligiousPractice. Ser. Socioling., GeorgetownUniv./Cent. Appl. Ling. Rowley, MA:NewburyHouseSchieffelin EL. 1985. Performance and thecultural constructionof reality. Am. Eth-nol. 12(4):707-24SchipperKM. 1974. The written memorial inTaoist ceremonies. In Religion and Ritualin Chinese Society, ed. AP Wolf, pp.309-24. Palo Alto: StanfordUniv. PressSearle J. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in thePhilosophy of Language. Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. PressSells MA. 1994. Mystical Languages of Un-saying. Chicago/London:Univ. ChicagoPressShelton AJ. 1976. Controlling capriciousgods. See Samarin1976, pp. 63-71SherzerJ. 1990. VerbalArt in San Blas: KunaCulture Through Its Discourse. Cam-bridge:CambridgeUniv. PressSilverstein M. 1976. Shifters, linguistic cate-gories, and culturaldescription. In Mean-ing in Anthropology, ed. KH Basso, HSelby, pp. 11-56. Albuquerque:Univ. N.M. PressSilverstein M. 1981. Metaforces of power intraditionaloratory.Lect. Dep. Anthropol.,Yale Univ., New Haven, CTSilverstein M. 1996. The secret life of texts.See Silverstein & Urban 1996b, pp.81-105Silverstein M, Urban G. 1996a. The naturalhistoryof discourse.See Silverstein& Ur-ban 1996b, pp. 1-17Silverstein M, Urban G, eds. 1996b. NaturalHistories of Discourse. Chicago: Univ.Chicago Press

SperberD, Wilson D. 1995. Relevance: Com-municationand Cognition. Oxford:Black-well. 2nd ed.Staal F. 1990.Rules WithoutMeaning: Ritual,Mantrasand theHumanSciences. TorontoStudies in Religion, Vol. 4. New York:LangSt. Augustine. 1961. Confessions.Transl. RSPine-Coffin. Harmondsworth,UK: Pen-guinStock B. 1996.AugustinetheReader: Medita-tion,Self-Knowledge,and the Ethics of In-terpretation. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniv. PressStromberg PG. 1993. Language and Self-Transformation:A Studyof the ChristianConversionNarrative. Cambridge:Cam-bridgeUniv. PressSullivan LE. 1988. Icanchu's Drum:An Ori-entation to Meaning in South AmericanReligions. New York: MacmillanSzuchewycz B. 1994. Evidentiality in ritualdiscourse:the social constructionof relig-ious meaning.Lang. Soc. 23:389-410Tambiah S. 1970. Buddhism and the SpiritCults in North-East Thailand Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. PressTambiahS. 1979. A performativeapproach oritual. Proc. Br. Acad. 65:113-69Tedlock D. 1983. The Spoken Wordand theWork of Interpretation. Philadelphia:Univ. Penn. PressTedlockD, MannheimB, eds. 1995. TheDia-logic Emergence of Culture.Urbana/Chi-cago:Univ. Ill. PressThomasPL, Afable PO. 1994. Kallahan nvo-cations to the dead. I'Homme 132, 34(4):89-99Titon JT. 1988. Powerhouse or God: Speech,Chant, and Song in an AppalachianBap-tist Church.Austin: Univ. Tex. PressTrix F. 1993. Spiritual Discourse: Learningwith an Islamic Master. Philadelphia:Univ. Penn. PressTsing AL. 1993. In the Realmof theDiamondQueen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-WayPlace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ.PressTylor EB. 1873. PrimitiveCulture,Vol2. Lon-don:Murray.UrbanG. 1989. The"I"of discourse.In Semi-otics, Self, and Society, ed. B Lee, G Ur-ban,pp.27-51. Berlin: Mouton deGruyterUrban G. 1991. A Discourse-Centered Ap-proach to Culture:Native South AmericanMyths and Rituals. Austin: Univ. Tex.PressUrban G. 1996. Metaphysical Community:TheInterplayof the Senses and the Intel-lect. Austin: Univ. Tex. Press



26/26

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE 71Valentine LP. 1995. Making It Their Own:Severn Ojibwe CommunicativePracticesToronto/Buffalo/London:Univ. TorontoPressVitebsky P. 1993. Dialogues with the Dead:

The Discussion of Mortality among theSora of Eastern India. Cambridge: Cam-bridge Univ. PressVolosinov VN. 1973. (1930). Marxismand thePhilosophy of Language. Transl. LMatejka, IR Titunik. New York/London:SeminarWagner R. 1986. Symbols That Stand forThemselves. Chicago/London:Univ. Chi-cago PressWallace AFC. 1966. Religion: An Anthropo-logical View.New York:Random HouseWeiner JF. 1991. The EmptyPlace: Poetry,Space, and Being among theFoi of PapuaNew Guinea. Bloomington/Indianapolis:

IndianaUniv. PressWheelock WT. 1982. The problem of rituallanguage:frominformation o situation.J.Am. Acad. Relig. 50(1):49-71Whyte SR. 1990. Uncertainpersons in Nyoledivination. J. Relig. Africa 20(1):41-62WitherspoonG. 1977. Language and Art inthe Navajo Universe. Ann Arbor: Univ.Mich. PressWolterstorff N. 1995. Divine Discourse:Philosophical Reflections on the Claimthat God Speaks. Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. PressWoolard KA. 1992. Language ideology: is-sues and approaches. Pragmatics2:235-50WrightDS. 1993. The discourse of awaken-ing: rhetorical practice in classical Ch'anBuddhism. J. Am. Acad Relig.61(1):23-40

Documents

Keane_Religious Language_ARA 26 (1997).pdf