Language and Religion: A Journey into the Human Mind

by William Downes

Overview

Language and Religion offers an innovative theory of religion as a class of cultural representations, dependent on language to unify diverse capacities of the human mind. It argues that religion is widespread because it is implicit in the way the mind processes the world, as it determines what we ought to do, practically and morally, to achieve our goals. Focusing on the world religions, the book relates modern cognitive theories of language and communication to culture and its dissemination. It explains basic features of religion such as the supernatural, the normative, abstract and ideal theological concepts such as 'God', and religious feeling. It develops a linguistic theory, based on how utterances are understood, of metaphysical and moral 'mysteries' and their key role in thought and action. It shows how such concepts gain strength in the light of their successful use and, when tempered by criticism, can also have genuine authority.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780511996436
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/25/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	518 KB

About the Author

William Downes is currently a Senior Fellow in the School of Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and Adjunct Professor of English and Linguistics at Glendon College, York University, Toronto. Educated at Queen's University and the University of Toronto and at University College London, he has taught at York University, Toronto, and in England at the London School of Economics and the University of East Anglia. He has been a Northrop Frye Fellow at Victoria College and Senior Resident at Massey College, University of Toronto. He is author of a major sociolinguistics textbook, Language and Society, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 1998). Committed to interdisciplinarity - he has bridged the human sciences, linguistics, and the humanities, literature, philosophy, history and politics - he believes that the concept of the 'two cultures' is an over-simple and problematical notion within the overall philosophy and history of disciplined inquiry. His long term research programme has been the use of the science of linguistics, broadly understood to include cognition and communication, as a method for the study of cultural representations in social context in a way sensitive to issues in philosophy and politics and the other humanities. This is a study of the nature of the representation of information in all its forms; in cognition or the mind-brain, in behaviour, in language in all its varieties and contexts, in history, literature, music, art and architecture.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. A cognitive theory of religion; 2. The supernatural and the uses of the intentional; 3. Dissemination and the comprehension of mysteries; 4. Pragmatics and pragmatism; 5. Authority; 6. Conceptual innovation and revelatory language.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'A rich, dense and engaging application of linguistic theory to the problem of religious concepts, ways of thinking, and experience.' Nigel Fabb, University of Strathclyde

Editorial Reviews

'A rich, dense and engaging application of linguistic theory to the problem of religious concepts, ways of thinking, and experience.' Nigel Fabb, University of Strathclyde

'… of interest to scholars of the philosophy of language or religion, cognitive psychologists, and linguists specializing in religion.' Abby Forster, eLanguage

From the Publisher