Language and Performance in Ritual: A Syntactical Approach by Frits Staal | Study notes Sociology of Rituals and Ceremonies

S/A 4074: Ritual and Ceremony

Lecture 16: Language and Performance

In today’s class we will briefly review ritual in terms of language and performance,

largely focusing on the work of Noam Chomsky, Frits Staal and Ronald Grimes.

Frits Staal followed up Edmund Leach’s call for work on the grammatical rules that

generate ritual language. This relied heavily on Noam Chomsky’s theory of “generative

grammar.” In this approach, Chomsky was critical of the possibility of uncovering the structure

of a language directly from the empirical data of human usage. Instead, Chomsky argued for a

focus on the linguistic competence of an “ideal speaker-listener...in a completely homogenous

speech community,” not the linguistic performance of the actually spoken language. Therefore,

instead of analyzing behavior and its products, Chomsky attempted to analyze the system of tacit

knowledge that goes into behavior, a shift from the cultural dimension of language use to the

cognitive dimension of linguistic ability. In a second basic argument, Chomsky also suggested

that all grammatical expressions have both a surface structure and a deep structure. Linguistic

expressions are generated from the deep structure by applying rules, such as rules of

transformation and recursivity. Like Levi-Strauss, Chomsky’s notion of deep structure suggests

the existence of a universal grammar that constrains all particular natural languages; and his

work on generative grammar has attempted to construct the syntax underlying all natural

languages in terms of an abstract formal system.

Chomsky’s methods and model are implicit in Staal’s theory of ritual, despite the fact

that Staal’s conclusions reflect different concerns. Staal first argues strongly for the inadequacy

of semantic (meaning) interpretations of ritual. For example, he contrasts two types of activity:

ordinary, everyday acts and ritual acts. In ordinary activity, the results are what count, and, for

that reason, ordinary activity is very open to spontaneous improvisation. In ritual, however, it is

the rules that count. “What is essential in the ceremony is the precise and faultless execution, in

accordance with rules, of numerous rites and recitations.” Staal also demonstrates that what

makes an ordinary action into a ritual action is not primarily a change in its meaning but a rule-

governed change in its form. Hence, he concludes, an ordinary action is turned into ritual action

by being subjected to formal rules of transformation. For example, verses from the Indian Vedas

are transformed into ritual mantras by virtue of the application of rules that govern their meter

and pronunciation. As a mantra, the verse is taken out of its textual context and turned into a

series of highly stylized sounds, the meaning of which is of no consequence. Indeed, many

Brahman ritual experts are quite ignorant of what the sounds actually mean, but they are highly

skilled in rendering them precisely according to the rules. Hence, for Staal, ritual is rule-

governed activity that can be understood only as such. It’s meaning, he continues, would be

nothing more than the various rationales that may have accrued to it over time, and, as such, is of

no use in analyzing ritual as ritual. “Like rocks or trees, ritual acts and sounds may be provided

with meaning, but they do not require meanings and do not exist for meaning’s sake.” Indeed, as

the most salient feature of ritual language is as acts that do things, not as a bearer of information,

Staal has argued that as “pure” performance, rituals do not have any meaning.

Staal argues that analysis of the syntactical rules of ritual holds out the promise of a real

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S/A 4074: Ritual and Ceremony Lecture 16: Language and Performance In today’s class we will briefly review ritual in terms of language and performance, largely focusing on the work of Noam Chomsky, Frits Staal and Ronald Grimes. Frits Staal followed up Edmund Leach’s call for work on the grammatical rules that generate ritual language. This relied heavily on Noam Chomsky’s theory of “generative grammar.” In this approach, Chomsky was critical of the possibility of uncovering the structure of a language directly from the empirical data of human usage. Instead, Chomsky argued for a focus on the linguistic competence of an “ideal speaker-listener...in a completely homogenous speech community,” not the linguistic performance of the actually spoken language. Therefore, instead of analyzing behavior and its products, Chomsky attempted to analyze the system of tacit knowledge that goes into behavior, a shift from the cultural dimension of language use to the cognitive dimension of linguistic ability. In a second basic argument, Chomsky also suggested that all grammatical expressions have both a surface structure and a deep structure. Linguistic expressions are generated from the deep structure by applying rules, such as rules of transformation and recursivity. Like Levi-Strauss, Chomsky’s notion of deep structure suggests the existence of a universal grammar that constrains all particular natural languages; and his work on generative grammar has attempted to construct the syntax underlying all natural languages in terms of an abstract formal system. Chomsky’s methods and model are implicit in Staal’s theory of ritual, despite the fact that Staal’s conclusions reflect different concerns. Staal first argues strongly for the inadequacy of semantic (meaning) interpretations of ritual. For example, he contrasts two types of activity: ordinary, everyday acts and ritual acts. In ordinary activity, the results are what count, and, for that reason, ordinary activity is very open to spontaneous improvisation. In ritual, however, it is the rules that count. “What is essential in the ceremony is the precise and faultless execution, in accordance with rules, of numerous rites and recitations.” Staal also demonstrates that what makes an ordinary action into a ritual action is not primarily a change in its meaning but a rule- governed change in its form. Hence, he concludes, an ordinary action is turned into ritual action by being subjected to formal rules of transformation. For example, verses from the Indian Vedas are transformed into ritual mantras by virtue of the application of rules that govern their meter and pronunciation. As a mantra, the verse is taken out of its textual context and turned into a series of highly stylized sounds, the meaning of which is of no consequence. Indeed, many Brahman ritual experts are quite ignorant of what the sounds actually mean, but they are highly skilled in rendering them precisely according to the rules. Hence, for Staal, ritual is rule- governed activity that can be understood only as such. It’s meaning, he continues, would be nothing more than the various rationales that may have accrued to it over time, and, as such, is of no use in analyzing ritual as ritual. “Like rocks or trees, ritual acts and sounds may be provided with meaning, but they do not require meanings and do not exist for meaning’s sake.” Indeed, as the most salient feature of ritual language is as acts that do things, not as a bearer of information, Staal has argued that as “pure” performance, rituals do not have any meaning. Staal argues that analysis of the syntactical rules of ritual holds out the promise of a real

science of ritual in contrast to the descriptive, interpretive strategies generated by semantic approaches concerned with meaning. In other words, syntactical rules can explain ritual, not just posit another subjective interpretation. Staal does not actually deny a semantic dimension in language; he simply denies that ritual is a language. As a rule-governed activity, ritual is like a language but is not actually a language, and for this reason, and unlike other linguistic approaches, he goes on to analyze ritual activity, not with the methods specific to linguistics, but with the mathematical and logical methods that, he argues, originally gave rise to linguistics in the first place. Staal concludes, in effect, that ritual predates language, as animal ritualization predates human language, and linguistic syntax itself is derived from ritual syntax. He appeals to ethological evidence to uncover the origins of ritual activity, but more immediately looks to pre- linguistic principles, which are somewhat comparable to those used in Chomsky’s generative grammar, to recover the deeper rules that govern and comprise ritual activity. In keeping with the idea that ritual syntax was the root of linguistic syntax, Staal credits ancient Indian ritualists and grammarians with the first science of ritual and the first linguistic theory. Based on analysis of both performed rituals and the knowledge of ritual known to Vedic experts, he identifies several major syntactical rules that constitute the grammatical structure or patterned sequence of ritual activity: recursivity (repetition until a goal is met), embedding (context), and transformation. If concerns with syntax dominate linguistic and cognitive theories, concerns with both semantics and syntax are prominent in theories of ritual performance that began to gain currency in the 1970's. For a semantic theorist like Milton Singer, “cultural performances” such as rituals, festivals and theater are expressions of the more abstract and hidden structures of the comprehensive cultural system. Others have come to see such activities less as expressions of an existing system and more as the very form in which culture as a system actually exists and is reproduced. Some syntactically inclined theorists, particularly those building on Austin’s model of “performative utterances” rather than Chomsky’s model of linguistic competence, have used theories of performance to try to overcome the tendency to treat action like a text to be decoded. Performance metaphors and analogies allow them to focus, they say, on what ritual actually does , rather than on what it is supposed to mean. While performance theory can appear to be a mass of confusing emphases and agendas, it does represent an important consensus on many aspects of ritual action. Historically speaking, a number of ideas came together in the mid-1970's to yield a “performance approach” to the study of ritual: Kenneth Burke’s discussions of dramatism, Victor Turner’s descriptions of ritual as “social drama,” Austin’s theory of “performative utterances,” Erving Goffman’s work on the ritual units that structure the performance of social interaction, and Maurice Bloch’s analysis of the effects of formulaic speech and song. While myth and ritual theorists had long argued that theater emerged from ritual, performance theorists tend to see more of a two-way street. And although the aesthetic connections among ritual, drama, music, folklore, and dance had been studied, culturalists could see provocative suggestions in the metaphors of drama and performance as to how the realm of cultural ideals actually comes to be embodied in social attitudes and personal experiences. In this way, the old Durkheimian description of how ritual orchestrates experiences of collective enthusiasm so as to mold people’s social identities continues to be recast in less functionalist terms - by asking how symbolic activities like ritual enable people to appropriate, modify, or reshape cultural values and ideals.

Hitches : mis-executions of a rite in which the procedures are incomplete (e.g. an initiation cut off by a fire alarm). Next, Grimes goes on to talk about “abuses,” rites that are “professed but hollow.” Like misfires, there are several variants: Insincerities amount to saying - or doing - things without the requisite feelings, thoughts, or intentions (e.g. televangelists who engage in ritual action as a means of money-making). Breaches are failures to follow through; abrogations of ceremonially made promises. Since breaches include breaking promises and failure to abide by contracts, it is one of the more familiar types of infelicity (e.g. swearing to keep secret the modes of recognition in Masonic ritual, then publishing them on the internet). It is at this point that Austin’s original typology ends, but, Grimes moves on to identify further examples not envisioned in Austin’s original scheme: Glosses are procedures that hide or ignore contradictions or major problems (e.g. going through a baby blessing when the wife has a black eye: few present experience what they would ordinarily). Flops: all procedures may be done correctly but the rite fails to resonate. It does not generate the proper tone, ethos or atmosphere (e.g. participants not having as good a time as is expected at a birthday party or fiesta). Ineffectualities are procedures that fail to bring about intended, observable changes. They are more serious than flaws, because flaws are only partial. In ineffectualities, a rite may be properly performed, but it does not produce the goods (e.g. one may not be healed, but die). Violations involve a moral element. Violating rites may be effective, but they are demeaning and seen from a particular moral stance as deficient (e.g. Aztec human sacrifice, female genital mutilation). Contagion occurs when a rite spills over its own boundaries. It may be effective, but it is uncontained (e.g. ritual battles may spill over into street violence, such as with violent sports fans). Opacity involves a ceremony, or part of a ceremony, being experienced as meaningless, unrecognizable or uninterpretable. It either fails to communicate or it communicates such conflicting messages that someone - either participant or observer - fails to grasp its sense (e.g. using a sacred language so much that in time it ceases to create mystery, but instead obfuscates). Defeat occurs when one ritual performance invalidates another (e.g. going through a rite meant to protect one from spirits being defeated by the “stronger magic” of an enemy’s sorcerer). Omission involves failure to perform a rite when required (e.g. not engaging in ritual

purification before entering the temple may result in one’s request to the gods being denied). Misframes involve misconstruing the genre of a rite. It is like an outsider missing the point (e.g. it is common for outsiders to think of magic as drama or vice-versa). Grimes’ typology of ritual infelicities is useful not only in helping to illustrate the importance of the performative approach to the study of ritual, but also in enabling us to consider the consequences of ritual failure. He admits to raising more questions than he has answered with this typology, and calls out for further empirical research to test and expand his categories. He asks researchers to consider issues such as: (1) who decides whether procedures fail? (2) the practical interrelation of these types of infelicity (3) the motives and mechanisms for evading the judgement that a rite does not work; (4) the potentially ethnocentric nature of the terms; (5) the need to systematically separate failure in and failure of rituals; and, finally (6) the relationship between ritual “infelicity” and ritual change. All of these performative issues call out for further research and study of ritual today.

Language and Performance in Ritual: A Syntactical Approach by Frits Staal, Study notes of Sociology of Rituals and Ceremonies

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