Communication of Meaning in Glossolalia

Abstract

Summary Glossolalia, or tongue speaking, is a phenomenon of language associated with charismatic religious movements. The speaker, usually in a church service context, utters language-like sounds which are sometimes heard by others as speech in a foreign tongue. The speech is regarded as inspired, and congregation members make an effort to interpret it, usually in moral terms. As part of an interview with a young minister who was an experienced tongue speaker, he was asked to speak in tongues in response to specific theme words. His glossolalic responses were tape-recorded and played to audiences in several studies to see how well they could identify what the speaker was thinking about in each case. The findings were that an audience, listening to glossolalia, will tend to make consistent judgments about the content, but what the speaker intends is not necessarily what the audience understands. Audiences will preferentially attribute personal and affective content to glossolalic speech, over other kinds of informational content. The findings are discussed in terms of the noncommunicative role of language in social sharing and cathartic expression.

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