Wakefield, John C. (2016). Emotional feelings as a form of evidence: A case study of visceral evidentiality in Mormon culture. In Alessandro Capone, & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 899-923). Cham: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_35
Abstract:
This paper develops a set of cultural scripts articulating some of the sociopragmatic knowledge held by the speech community popularly known as the Mormons – officially members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). These scripts focus on the value that Mormons place on using feelings as the best and ultimate form of evidence for verifying the truth of anything related to their religious beliefs. They are proposed to account for the linguistic behaviour of Mormons in relation to their knowledge claims, in relation to their stated source of this knowledge, and in relation to their sense of duty to cause others to acquire this knowledge.
The scripts in this paper are supported by linguistic evidence, which comes primarily from the discourse of respected members of the LDS community. The online searches for evidence and the formulation of the scripts were guided by the author’s intuitive knowledge as an L1 speaker of “Mormonese”, born and raised within the Mormon community.
Basing beliefs on feelings is a value that most cultures and individuals possess to some degree, and the things that are “proven” by one’s feelings to be true will vary depending on the specific belief system of the culture or individual. This phenomenon is referred to as culturally-constructed visceral evidentiality (CVE). The LDS community overtly articulates the value of visceral evidentiality to an unusual degree, so this speech community provides an excellent opportunity for analysing the characteristics of a specific case of CVE.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
