The Manner of Their Language: The Linguistic and Cultural Context for Revelation

I know you don't speak-a my language, but JUST GIVE ME THE VEGEMITE SANDWICH ALREADY

You can listen to the audio version of this essay here.

I had a few experiences trying to learn other languages as a kid. The very first one I remember was when my mom would take me and my brothers to this house where a Russian lady lived. The lady would speak Russian to us and we learned a few words and how to say some of the numbers and stuff. Unfortunately little of this teaching seems to have stuck; I started reading The Brothers Karamazov recently, and for fun I had a glance at the text in the original Russian. Despite many minutes of basic conversation thirty years ago, and despite not ever having reviewed any of what I learned nor ever learning any actual grammar or the script, I could not read Dostoyevsky in Russian! Unbelievable.

The next experience I had with another language was German, which I took when I was in eighth and ninth grade. All of us had to pick German names to go by in the class, and so I was “Kai.” I still remember the disdain in my teacher’s voice whenever he would call on me and I would get a question wrong—he’d say, “Kaaaiiii,” in a falling tone, like he was sighing as he said it. I’d get all flushed and say, “Who’s this ‘Kai’ you speak of? I’m Bryce, and I’m not a disappointment!” One of the times he let out the sigh-Kai was when we were looking at a German saying in our textbook. The saying was, “Übung macht den Meister,” and the text gave us a little hint: “Übung” meant “practice.” The teacher asked me to translate that saying, and I said, “Practice makes you a master.” “KAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIII,” he said, and the letters all drooped so low that they hit the floor. Then I said, “Or, ‘practice makes perfect.’” I don’t remember him giving me the high-Kai after that; all I remember is the disappointment.

But the mistake I made indicated a misunderstanding I held onto for a long time. For a long time I thought that other languages were created and spoken by just switching certain letters with other letters in our English words, in order to make new words with new letters in another language. So German was basically English except a bunch of letters were switched around. I don’t know how I came to think this—no one ever told me this was the case, I just had it in my head and no one ever corrected it, either. Actually that has happened to me a lot in my life. I have carried around some shockingly false ideas for years and years without realizing it. Like for example, I had faith in the American political system for decades. Ha! To be young and foolish.

My third childhood try at learning a language came in high school. I was older now, and wiser; I kept twelve-packs of Hawaiian Punch in my room, and I listened to lite screamo and read books by Ayn Rand. Clearly I saw myself as ready for anything, and so I signed up to take Latin. It was the first time it had ever been taught in my high school, and the teacher, Wes Baden, was a lawyer from the community who was doing the class as a volunteer. Yes, of his own free will and choice he was going to a rural high school to teach a dead language to a bunch of obnoxious Silverstein and Hawthorne Heights fans. I thought he was crazy but I had heard some stuff about Latin and so I was interested.

I could tell you lots of stories about that class, including about how the teacher dressed up as a drill sergeant and took us to the basketball court to march, boot-camp style, while chanting the conjugations of Latin verbs and the declensions of Latin nouns. You wouldn’t believe those stories, of course, but then I would tell you that Baden, the teacher, actually ended up writing an article for The Classical Journal about how he ran the class, and it was published in 2006! There he confirms that he did dress up, he did blow a whistle, he did call the mission “Operation Latin Thunder,” and we did march in the gym while shouting declensions and conjugations. It happened all the time.

And you know what? I freaking LOVED it. I looked forward to that class every single day, and it completely changed my life, because after that all I wanted to do was learn languages. I learned Spanish on my mission and became obsessed with languages in college; when I finished my undergraduate degree, I had piled up a grand total of 221.5 credits—that’s almost two full degrees’ worth of courses—and of those, 84 were languages classes.

So maybe it’s not that much of a surprise that I started paying attention to how language affects revelation. Specifically for today, we’re looking at how our language, along with our culture, form part of the context within which we seek, interpret, and understand revelation. Since those factors are part of the context, they end up having an absolutely enormous impact not only on what we get, but also on what’s possible for us to get.

Let’s take a look.

Language and culture: the delivery

The first thing to do is to make a stronger connection between language and culture. I’ve discussed this point before in a previous Rainbows essay, but it’s important to keep this in mind, and we’ll into greater detail here than before.

We find one of the most important scriptural statements of the principle of context in a theological sermon given by Nephi, in the book of 2 Nephi. Chapter 31 begins with Nephi telling us that while he can’t write much, what he’s written seems like enough to him (31:2), and he now wants to finish with some thoughts about the “doctrine of Christ.” He’s going to speak “plainly according to the plainness of my prophesying” (2).

It’s at this point, before getting into the doctrine of Christ, that we get the statement about context. “For my soul delighteth in plainness,” he says, “for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men” (3). This is his preface to mentioning context: he says that the Lord’s manner of working among us is one of plainness. With the “for” that begins his next remark, we know that he’s going to expound what he just said. So what follows is more information about the Lord’s manner of working among his children. Here is that information:

For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding, for he speaketh unto men according to their language unto their understanding (3).

This is Nephi’s explanation of what it means for the Lord to work with “plainness” among us—he gives light to our understanding, and he does this by speaking to us “according to [our] language unto [our] understanding.” So what might it mean to speak “according to our language”? I take it as saying that the Lord modifies what he wants to tell us so that it can be expressed more or less effectively in our language, whatever that language happens to be. He conforms the message to the language, and the language, of course, is part of our context: it shifts from person to person.

It’s important to appreciate the full extent of this idea. As soon as God’s message to us is converted into our language, it necessarily becomes constrained by the forms of expression made possible by our language. And it isn’t just words and grammar; these constraints also stem from the meanings we attach to those words and the social functions the language plays. All of that is part of the linguistic context as well, and so has a limiting effect on what can be done with God’s message when it’s cast in that language.

The Lord made a very similar point to Joseph Smith and others in instruction he gave in 1831. Let’s see that next.