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From: donald@utcsrgv.UUCP (Don Chan)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Plusgood Tonguespeak
Message-ID: <3299@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Feb-84 09:51:58 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.3299
Posted: Fri Feb 17 09:51:58 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Feb-84 10:20:16 EST
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 33

For a secular (and disinterested) view of glossolalia ("speaking in
tongues") I'd recommend

	William J. Samarin
	Tongues of Men and Angels (The Religious Language of Pentecostalism)
	1972, Macmillian Co., New York, N.Y.

A bit dry, but contains some interesting info.  Apparently glossolalia is
not unknown in other cultures, and is a moderately researched phenomenon.
Analysis of recorded tonguespeak reveals it to be randomly jumbled phonemes
chained into pseudo-language syntax.

The book often cited by pro-tonguespeakers, Sherrill's "They Speak in
Other Tongues", is most charitably described as highly uncritical.

In any pentecostal church you'll find some variant of the story
"one service person X started speaking in tongues and person Y, a
newcomer to the church, recognized it as High Slobovian.  Person X
has never even hear of Slobovia."
Needless to say, nobody can ever offer more than that.  Usually the
person telling the story got it second or third-hand.

To be fair, most tonguespeak is not claimed as xenoglossia (speaking of
actual foreign language), but just as a sign to believers.

If tonguespeak can produce xenoglossia, do formal languages count as well
as natural ones? Imagine attending a febrile fundamentalist rally and
noticing that the tonguespeaker next to you is reciting C code!

-- 
Don Chan, University of Toronto Department of Computer Science
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