• They are always derivative of the speakers’ native language. In other words, the phonemes, vowels/consonants, and syllables are those of the speaker’s native tongue.
• They often contain isolated words or phrases from known human languages which are different from the speaker’s native tongue. These foreign language words or phrases are inserted at various points in the glossa.
• There is a systematic clipping of syllabics and parsing of phonology (i.e., a shortening and simplification) that derives from the speaker’s native tongue. These clippings-parsings are so regular that experts in the field can predict them before hearing a new “tongue.”
• This shortening and simplification leads to a high incidence of repetition. The same non-semantic words and phrases repeat themselves often, though the ordering of these words-phrases is systematically switched during the course of the utterance.

It seems odd that a supposed celestial or “angelic” language would always be related to, or derivative of, the speaker’s native tongue. Other studies have confirmed this oddness and link “tongues” with dissociative trance states. If this is the case, then we should not be surprised to find glossolalia in non-Christian cultures. This is indeed the case.

In a cross cultural survey of glossolalia and related forms of dissociative speaking, Harvard anthropologist L. Carlyle May concluded that the Christian tradition of speaking in tongues “probably had its roots in the ancient religions of Asia Minor.” Similar sorts of speaking were widely known in the Greco-Roman world and were generally considered, by polytheist and philosophical elites, to be “primitive” or “barbaric” practices. These speech acts were, in other words, associated with shamanist societies and what May calls “religiomedical practitioners.” While we today tend to think of such societies as small-scale foragers or horticulturalists, in classical times there were several large and powerful groups (such as the Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals) that were still suffused with shamanic ideas and practices.

During the course of his study, May was able to parse and categorize dissociative speech-phenomena into six categories:

Language of Spirits: This is the speaking of an alleged “language,” considered to be glossolalic gibberish by linguists, known only to supernatural beings. It usually occurs while in a state of trance or excitability, and was often used during divinatory or curing ceremonies. This type of “language” was widespread in shamanic societies and is the kind of speech that charismatics call “angelic tongues.”

Sacerdotal Language: In contrast to the preceding linguistic nonsense, sacerdotal speech is an actual archaic language learned by shamans or priests and passed down faithfully from one generation to another. Over sufficient time the vernacular would change, making sacerdotal language intelligible only to specialists and cognoscenti. A modern analogy would be Latin speaking Catholic priests.

Language of Animals: This “language of nature,” often used by shamans and found worldwide, simply and expertly mimics animal sounds. Shamans would claim they were talking to animals in this manner, and also claim that such “speech” was a sign he could transform himself into a nonhuman embodiment and move freely between the under world, earth world, and sky world.

Phonations Frustes: These incoherent speech acts include ventriloquism, whistling, groaning, shrieking, crying, and mumbling, frequently interspersed with actual but strangely altered speech. At times, shamans will change and project their voices as if carrying on a conversation with spirits.

Xenoglossia: This is actual speech in a real language. It is uttered by someone who claims that s/he never learned the language, that the language is not consciously accessible, and that it arose spontaneously. The language is spoken only in a trance or dissociative state. This is well known from alleged cases of glossolalia among Christians but is also known among shamans. When cases of xenoglossia are investigated, it is nearly always the case that the person has had substantial exposure to the foreign language, and there are mundane explanations for its use. Unsurprisingly, xenoglossia is most common in Africa where people are often raised in polyglot environments. Among some Buddhists, xenoglossia is explained by transmigration of souls. Thus, if a Korean is able to speak German without supposedly having learned the language, it is explained by saying that in a past life, the person must have been German.

Ermeneglossia (Interpretation of Tongues): This is normal speech which follows one of the previous speech displays. It supposedly interprets what was previously uttered. This too is well known in some Christian circles but is also widespread in shamanic societies. Because this nearly always involves two people, implicit or explicit cooperation is essential. Glossolalia and ermeneglossia often appear together, so that “the gibberish is explained and put to use.”

As is true of all scholars who have studied these speech phenomena, May concludes they have cultural origins, conventions, and constraints:

Religious mores determine to a great extent how the practitioner may act when he is entranced and whether or not he may become entranced at all while curing, divining, or convoking the spirits. Even if frenzied behavior is countenanced in a given society, the speaker is not given absolute freedom of behavior: he must follow within certain bounds the customs of other speakers. Consequently, there seems to be considerable truth in the assertion that people do not speak in tongues unless they have heard about speaking-in-tongues, and to this should be added that on the whole they become glossolalists only if their customs permit them to.

Glossolalia in one form or another is found in religions that are tolerant of highly emotional, individualistic behavior on the part of medicine men and their assistants. The priest may seize upon exotic utterances to demonstrate the realness and variety of his powers and to maintain about himself an air of mysticism and otherworldliness. Laymen are inclined to accept his odd sounds as proof of his spiritual prowess.

This survey has shown that speaking-in-tongues is widespread and very ancient. Indeed, it is probable that as long as man has had divination, curing, sorcery, and propitiation of spirits he has had glossolalia. Other forms of speech-phenomena that have been discussed would also seem to be very old.

As far as May is concerned, all these speech acts are learned either explicitly through teaching or implicitly through mimicry. There is no evidence to the contrary.

If you are interested in these kinds of speech acts, head over to your local Penetecostal church on Sunday to marvel at Babel for yourself.

"Glossolalia" by James Roper

References:

May, L. Carlyle (1956). A Survey of Glossolalia and Related Phenomena in Non-Christian Religions. American Anthropologist, 58 (1), 75-96 DOI: 10.1525/aa.1956.58.1.02a00060

Goodman, Felicitas (1969). Phonetic Analysis of Glossolalia in Four Cultural Settings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 8 (2) DOI: 10.2307/1384336

Samarin, William (1968). The Linguisticality of Glossolalia. Hartford Quarterly, 8 (4), 49-75

The discovery that two events, symbols, thoughts or texts, while so utterly separated by time and space that they could not “really” be connected, seem, nevertheless, to be the same or to be speaking directly to one another raises the possibility of a secret interconnection of things that is the scholar’s most cherished article of faith.

I had just such a thrill this morning.  It began after reading Geoffrey MacDonald’s story about the thriving spiritualism market in Salem, Massachusetts, where — side by side and with remarkable comity — witches and evangelicals offer services for those who believe the world is populated by all manner of spirits that can be propitiated in one way or another:

Every October, an estimated half-million visitors flock to this city that hanged witches in 1692 and wholeheartedly accepts them in 2010. Amidst the costumed revelry, pagans and Christians say they sense genuine hunger for spiritual depth and strive to help tourists embrace their respective traditions. And in this festival atmosphere, both sides make a point not to vilify the other.

What appears to be a kind of Christian-Wicca syncretism may seem incongruous but it makes sense, given their shared assumptions about the myriad spirits that invisibly operate on everything:

Paying customers were lined up outside witch houses and psychic parlors when 20-year-old Casey Sholes of Willimantic, Conn., finally stumbled across a place offering dream interpretations for free.

Inside, two interpreters at “The Vault” assured the aspiring nurse that despite her weird dream, the Creator has blessed her with special talents and a heart for the elderly.

It wasn’t until she got up to leave that she learned she had just gotten a spiritual reading from Christian evangelists inside a church.

“I didn’t even notice that this is a church,” Stoles said, leaving the former bank building that’s now home to a congregation called “The Gathering.”

Founded 12 years ago, “The Gathering” has become so friendly with local witches that the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel cut its ties and funding, according to Pastor Phil Wyman.

The line between Christianity and witchcraft has always been thin (with many border transgressions), a fact which is on commercial display in Salem.  Though it might be easy for non-evangelical Christians to dismiss this connection as a product of the charismatic imagination, which sees good and evil spirits as real and pervasive forces working on every aspect of daily life, this would be a mistake.  Catholics — they of possessions, exorcisms, saints, rosaries, and transubstantiation — are much in evidence:

Visitors from near and far ask for disciplined direction in matters of love, health and money. Laurie “Lorelei” Stathopoulos, who describes herself as a high priestess of witchcraft, called advice-seeking Catholics “my best clients” at her store, Crowe Haven Corner.

“They come in, they get readings, and they still stay Catholic,” she said. “Their religion has had its ups and downs, so they’re quite confused. They’re not looking for a new religion, but they’re looking for a little more hope and stability … They don’t want to go the church (for advice), but they’ll come to me.”

While reading MacDonald’s article I was of course thinking about Africa, that vast continent where indigenous beliefs mingle so freely and easily with Islam, Catholicism, and evangelical Christianity in particular.  Then — bam — the coincidence that brings so much thrill: I journey over to Slate, where Johann Hari reviews V.S. Naipaul’s new book The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief.  Hari is quite up to his task:

There is a great thudding taboo in any discussion of Africa. Western journalists and aid workers see it everywhere, yet it is nowhere in our coverage back home. We don’t want to talk about it. We don’t know how to. We smother it in silence, even though it is one of the most vivid and vibrant and violent parts of African life. We are afraid—of being misunderstood, or of sounding like our own ugliest ancestors. The suppressed topic? The African belief in spirits and spells and ancestors and black magic.

Where do these beliefs come from? What do so many Africans get out of them? Can they be changed? These are questions that are asked in Africa all the time, but we are deaf to the conversation. It’s not hard to see why. The imperial rape and pillage of Africa was “justified” by claiming Africans were “primitive” and “backward” people sunk in a morass of voodoo, who had to be “civilized” in blood and Christianity.

This “civilizing process” was of course greatly aided by Christian missionaries working closely with European colonial governments.  While various forms of state sanctioned Christianity took considerable root, these efforts pale in comparison to the spiritual movement now sweeping the continent: charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity.

Those familiar with indigenous African beliefs on the one hand and evangelical Christianity on the other are hardly surprised by this.  Both bodies of belief have this in common: the world is heavily populated with spirits who affect everything in it.  People can use a variety of techniques to control and direct these spirits.

Africans themselves do not see much difference between the prayers, intercessions, and exorcisms that evangelicals use to control these spirits, and the rituals used by witch doctors to accomplish the same things.  Neither do I.

As I have mentioned in several previous posts, one of autism’s effects is a lack of “theory of mind.”  This in turn renders autistics unable to conceive of supernatural agents, gods, or spirits.  It therefore comes as no surprise that autistics are not religious.

None of this, however, prevented an evangelical in Indiana from attempting to cure autism with an exorcism.  The Courthouse News Service reports:

Uyesugi told the grandma that her grandson “could be cured of his autism by having ‘the demons’ cast out of his body.”

She told Uyesugi to go ahead, and he performed the exorcism with help from Aaron Raby, who restrained Jacob while Uyesugi assaulted him, the insurer says.

During the exorcism, Uyesugi “repeatedly struck [Jacob] on the chest, commanding ‘the demons’ to leave [Jacob's] body,’” according to the complaint.

Uyesugi also “put his hand down Jacob’s throat, claiming that ‘demons’ were inside causing Jacob to vomit blood,” the insurer says.

And he struck Jacob in the face while Aaron restrained him, according to the complaint.

A Monroe County jury convicted Uyesugi of felony battery and criminal confinement.

Glad to see he was convicted and will be pondering his delusions from jail.

Elsewhere in evangelical world, exorcisms to cure homosexuality are all the rage.  Over at Details, Matt Mcallester has posted a disturbing article titled “Deliverance: The True Story of a Gay Exorcism.”  Ironically, it is these Pentecostals who are ill and in need of a cure.  Another case of inmates controlling the asylum.

Research performed in the 1980s at Denison University by the late anthropologist Felicitas Goodman led to a theory that glossolalia was a trance state caused by rhythmic discharges from the reticular formation, an area of the brain stem that plays a role in sleep and dreams. Goodman believed that this represented an alternative neural pathway for language, but more recent research has cast light on activity in other areas of the brain.

In 2006, Andrew Newberg and associates conducted the first functional neuroimaging study of cerebral changes during the act of glossolalia. In the study, published in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, Newberg and other researchers at the University of Pennsylvania managed to run single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scans to measure regional cerebral blood flow in the brains of five people during episodes of active glossolalia.  Newberg, the director for the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, discovered that activity the frontal lobes decreased, including activity in the brain’s primary language processing centers.

As noted elsewhere in the blog, I have serious doubts about the practice of imaging brains in an effort to identify localized regions of activity and interest.  It is not like the rest of the brain is disengaged or shut down, and using questionable statistical techniques and false coloration to specify small areas of heightened activity does not tell us much about what is happening inside the brain.  It is akin to high-tech phrenology.

The more interesting studies of “speaking in tongues” have been done by linguists, who uniformly conclude that the utterances of those under the thrall of the spirit resemble no known human languages, and fail to display any of the aspects of universal grammar identified by Noam Chomsky.  These words, in other words, appear to be gibberish, or languages spoken in another part of the universe.  You can find one such study here.