Global TVET challenges on the 21st century

21 What is

‘speaking in tongues’?

Walt Wolfram

What happens when religious people ‘speak in tongues’?

Is their speech a real language? What is its relationship to natural language?

Th e utterances fl owed eff ortlessly from his mouth: La horiya la hariya, la hayneekeechee aleekeechi arateeli haya. It sounded like poetry in a foreign language, but no one else spoke the language or understood it. Th at didn’t make any diff erence; the speaker who uttered these words in his private prayers considered them a spe-cial language for talking to God. Although it seems esoteric and mysterious to those who encounter it for the fi rst time, ‘speaking in tongues’, or more technically, ‘glossolalia’, is not an uncommon linguistic phenomenon. Millions of English speakers around the world have spoken in tongues and speakers of many other languages have experienced a similar form of linguistic expression. It has a long history in Christianity and in other religions as well, perhaps

as long as humans have had language. In Christianity, it has been well documented since the Day of Pentecost, with the last century witnessing a signifi cant revival in its use, especially in so-called holiness churches but also in some more liturgical churches such as Catholic and Anglican congregations.

Glossolalia has also been documented in other religions and in some non-religious practices. For example, practitioners of the Peyote cult among Native American Indians, shamans exercising witchcraft in Haiti, and Tibetan monks uttering various chants may also use a type of glossolalia. What exactly is it? Is it language? If not, what is its relationship to natural language? And how does it function in religious expression and in society?

Linguists have been studying the structure of glossolalia for some time now using the methods applied to the analysis of natural language. Studies include identifying the sounds, the sequencing of sounds into syllables, and the arrangement of segments into larger units similar to words and syntax in natural language. Glossolalic fl uency may range from minimally organized, barely formed grunt-like sounds to highly organized streams of consonants and vowels that sound like highly expressive natural language.

Th e majority of sounds used in glossolalia come from a person’s native language, though some speakers are capable of using other sounds as well. When compared with a speaker’s native language, however, the inventory of sounds is restricted in ways that make it somewhat comparable to the speech of young children. For example, if a language has forty signifi cant vowel and consonant sounds, only ten to twenty of those sounds might be used in the glossolalia.

And syllables also tend to be somewhat simpler than in natural language, so that alternating sequences of a single consonant and single vowel are repeated. For example, notice how lahoriya in the sample alternates between a simple consonant and vowel. Glossolalia may, however, also exhibit traits of expressive or poetic language:

rhyming and alliteration are found in some speakers’ utterances.

Notice, for example, the rhyming in phrases like la horiya la hariya or hayneekeechee aleekeechi.

What is ‘speaking in tongues’? 95

In some worship traditions within Christianity, aft er one person utters glossolalia in a public meeting, another person will follow with a prophetic ‘interpretation’ into a natural language such as English or Spanish. Usually these interpretations reinforce religious themes shared by the group. An analysis of utterances and the interpretations using the techniques of translation theory, however, reveals that such interpretations are not literal translations. Th ere are also reports of knowledgeable audience members recognizing the utterances of glossolalists as particular foreign languages (‘xenoglossia’), but recorded documentation of such cases has proven to be elusive.

Linguistically, glossolalia is a kind of ‘pseudolanguage’—non-sense syllables of a familiar language that are reminiscent of an earlier, prelanguage babbling stage. While most people stop using nonsense syllables in childhood, once they have acquired a natural language, glossolalists return to a stage in which sounds are used for purposes other than the communication of specifi c thoughts.

Of course, not all adult language users completely give up uttering nonsense syllables. Th e writer J. R. R. Tolkien had a proclivity for speaking nonsense syllables throughout his life, and some modern music genres (think of ‘scat’ singing in jazz) are also characterized by the use of nonsense syllables. Speaking in tongues may also be an acquired capability, in which regular practice results in more fl uently constructed strings of syllables. Tolkien, for example, apparently practiced his production of nonsense syllables regularly in order to refi ne the expressive eff ect of his utterances.

Though some psychologists have connected speaking in tongues with hypnotic trance, hysteria, or even schizophrenia, such assessments seem far too severe and judgmental. In fact, normal, well-adjusted people may speak in tongues in socially specifi ed situations such as personal prayer, religious ritual, or public worship.

Th e religious signifi cance of speaking in tongues lies mostly in its demonstration that in such situations a speaker is able to transcend ordinary speech.

About the author

Although Walt Wolfram is most noted for his research on American dialects, his sociolinguistic career started with the study of speaking in tongues. In the mid-1960s, he conducted one of the fi rst linguistic analyses of glossolalia based on an extensive set of tape recordings of its public and private use. Decades later he still thinks that the collec-tion of naturally occurring samples of glossolalia was the most sensitive fi eldwork situation he ever encountered.

Suggestions for further reading

In this book: Th e topic of how social contexts infl uence the way lan-guages function and interact is addressed in chapters 8 (pidgins and creoles), 18 (language confl ict), 38 (Cajun), 39 (German in the U.S.), and 40 (Gullah).

Elsewhere:

Goodman, Felicitas D. Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia (University of Chicago Press, 1972). A comparison of speak-ing in tongues in diff erent cultures that explains it as a kind of hypnotic trance. Th ough this psychological explanation does not hold up, the comparison of glossolalia across cultures is useful.

Nickell, Joe. Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions, and Healing Cures (Prometheus, 1993). A historical, forensic discussion of speaking in tongues along with other kinds of paranormal religious behavior. Th e focus is on explaining the need for the establish-ment of supernatural events within Christian religious tradition.

Samarin, William J. Tongues of Men and Angels: Th e Religious Language of Pentecostalism (Macmillan, 1972). Th ough somewhat dated, this still remains the most comprehensive linguistic description of glossolalia.

Describes it as a kind of pseudolanguage comparable to prelanguage babbling.

Samarin, William J. ‘Variation and variables in religious glossolalia’, in Language in Society (1972) 1:121–30. A concise, technical linguistic de-scription of glossolalia written primarily for linguists and sociolinguists.



22

What happens if you are raised