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Speaking in Tongues
Karen Stollznow - The Naked Skeptic
During a ‘faith healing’ session at a Charismatic church in Sydney, I was not healed.
The parishioners encircled me, laid their hands upon me, and ordered me to stop thinking “impure thoughts”. The female Minister signed a cross on my forehead with sweet-scented oil, and prayed. The group began uttering unfamiliar ‘language’…they were speaking in tongues. Pressing her hand firmly against my forehead, the Minister declared, “The holy spirit flows through you…now!”
Nothing happened.
In disbelief, the entire performance suddenly ceased. Take two. The Minister’s prayers resumed, and the speaking in tongues grew more fervent.
“The holy spirit flows through you… NOW!”
I fell backwards…filled with the holy spirit of the Minister’s fist…
Glossolalia, better known as speaking in tongues, is the production of incomprehensible utterances. This is a seemingly spontaneous, uncontrollable, stream of language-like sounds. In trying to unscramble the sounds, to unearth a signal amongst the noise, you might be forgiven for thinking that the speaker has code-switched into a foreign language.
Xenoglossia is a specific type of speaking in tongues, where a subject supposedly breaks out into a foreign language, an alien language, or an ancient, dead, lost, unknown to any linguist kind of language. They didn’t learn this one though Berlitz. These ‘languages’ are allegedly unknown to the speakers. They simply enter into a trance and channel the speech, merely acting as a conduit for any ‘messages’.
Speaking in tongues is an ancient practice. As in my anecdote above, it is still practiced today. Usually occurring in the context of a religious ceremony, individuals are ‘possessed’ by the ‘holy spirit’ during healing and devotion. It is not a feature of all Christian denominations, but is a particular ritual of the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches (based in Acts 2:4). In this context, “giving a tongue” to the congregation is conveying a ‘message from god’.
Recently, I encountered an example of ‘singing in tongues’. I was contacted by Mike, a musician from the punk band, The Knights of the New Crusade. Mike sent me a copy of A Challenge to the Cowards of Christendom, and asked me to analyse the song, Knight Beat: Speaking in the Holy Spirit. In Mike’s own words, this is an “end of session ‘jam’ where I started speaking in tongues (or scatting, in secular terminology).” Had Mike stumbled across the simple explanation with this admission?
The Knights of the New Crusade's A Challenge to the Cowards of Christendom on Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label.
This is a loud, fast-paced punk song, with rapid-fire vocals. Like a mild hysteria, the glossolalia exhibits paralinguistic factors, such as raised pitch, and increased volume and speed. There are also linguistic factors, whereby the glossolalia initially appears to resemble words and continuous speech. However, it is completely lacking in structure, meaning and grammar. I analysed the song using a sound editor. I played it forwards and backwards, trying to isolate any recognisable words. Although the ‘lyrics’ were mostly gibberish, the mind searches for patterns and I swore I could hear mosquito, Bora Bora and Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
This highlights some interesting aspects of repetition and sound combinations in glossolalia. Examples typically exhibit reorganised syllables and permissible groups of sounds (phonotactics) as found in the languages spoken by or familiar to the speaker. Like a Lewis Carroll nonsense word, speaking in tongues produces ‘wrong’ but ‘possible’ words. However, glossolaliacs are not as creative as Carroll and his slithy toves. There is a great deal of duplication in glossolalia. As a mini experiment, try reciting a large series of numbers haphazardly, or try to ‘speak in tongues’ by producing rapid, random speech. Chances are, you will produce some sequencing and repetition. These factors support the idea that glossolalia is conscious, artificial behaviour, although it is not necessarily deception.
The cover may already be blown. In 2006, a research team led by Andrew Newberg conducted a neuroimaging study to examine cerebral activity during glossolalia. In brief, the researchers found that when someone speaks in tongues the emotion centres of the brain show an increase in activity, while the language centres show a reduction in activity. This suggests that glossolalia is passionate, stream-of-consciousness babble, not language. The Newberg et al. article also makes the important observation that glossolalia is expected behaviour in some religious groups. (Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. 2006. Vol. 148, No. 1, 22, pp. 67-71).
We can think of speaking in tongues as inspired babbling, prattling, word-imitating, scatting improvisation. Meaning is the interpretation of the faithful. It is language-like, but it is not language. In my estimation, Knight Beat: Speaking in the Holy Spirit is just a jam session. While great for crowd surfing and moshing, the song is as much a message from the ‘Holy Spirit’ as Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula or Cab Calloway’s Hi-de-hi-de-hi-di-hi!
Stollznow, Karen. 2007. Singing in Tongues. Australasian Science. Vol.28, No.7.
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#$%@!
and Welcome to Bad Language
I'm Karen Stollznow
...(Cunning) Linguist,
Author, Skeptic and Investigator of the
paranormal and
pseudo-scientific.
The Psychic Skeptic…
Ghost Mining: Investigating a Haunted Hotel…
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