Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:45:56.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Who are you in this body?”: Identifying demons and the path to deliverance in a London Pentecostal church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Kirsty Rowan
Kirsty Rowan*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Languages and Cultures SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London, WC1H 0XG, United Kingdomkr2@soas.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is an examination of the interaction between evangelists and participants of a demonic deliverance (exorcism) ceremony in a London, UK Pentecostal church. The data is taken from an online recording and transcribed using conversation analysis conventions. A familiar feature of exorcism practice is the initial demand for the demon's identity. This study suggests that the importance of asking this question is due to it being procedurally strategic in modelling a performative path of the deliverance ceremony, which results in ritual efficacy. In particular, it is proposed that the omission of the question asking for the identity of the demon causes the deliverance path to become temporarily disrupted. This disruption is the result of a loss of thematic mapping between adverse life events and the causal agency within this specific sphere of sociocultural activity. (Religion, exorcism, possession, diaspora, spirits)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 247 - 270
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Allen (2006). Exorcism and conversion to African Pentecostalism. Exchange 35(1):116–33.Google Scholar
Austin, John L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bialecki, Jon (2011a). No caller ID for the soul: Demonization, charisms, and the unstable subject of Protestant language ideology. Anthropological Quarterly 84(3):679–703.Google Scholar
Bialecki, Jon (2011b) Quiet deliverances. In Lindhardt, Martin (ed.), The ritual life of Pentecostal charismatic Christians, 249–76. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Bonner, Campbell (1943). The technique of exorcism. The Harvard Theological Review 36(1):39–49.Google Scholar
Boxer, Diana (2002). Applying sociolinguistics: Domains and face-to-face interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, Pascal (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Brierley, Peter (2011). UK church statistics 2005–2015. Tonbridge: ADBC Publishers.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. (1996). Pragmatic markers in English grammaticalisation and discourse functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, & Selting, Margret (eds.) (1996). Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, & Ford, Celia E. (eds.) (2004). Sound patterns in interaction: Cross-linguistic studies from conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Csordas, Thomas J. (1992). The affliction of Martin: Religious, clinical and phenomenological meaning in a case of demonic oppression. In Gaines, Atwood D. (ed.), Ethnopsychiatry: The cultural construction of professional and folk psychiatries, 125–70. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Csordas, Thomas J. (1994). The sacred self: A cultural phenomenology of charismatic healing. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro, & Brenneis, Donald L. (eds.) (1986). The audience as co-author. Text 6(3):239–347 (Special issue).Google Scholar
EAUK (n.d.). Research and statistics. Online: http://www.eauk.org/church/research-and-statistics/; accessed February 2015.Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara A., & Thompson, Sandra A. (2010). Responses to wh-questions in English conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 43(2):133–56.Google Scholar
Frieden, Ken (1990). The language of demonic possession: A key word analysis. Religion 58:41–53.Google Scholar
Gale, Jerry E. (1991). Conversation analysis of therapeutic discourse: The pursuit of a therapeutic agenda. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Gifford, Paul (1998). African Christianity: Its public role. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Gifford, Paul (2014). Evil, witchcraft, and deliverance in the African worldview. In Clarke, Clifton (ed.), Pentecostal theology in Africa, 112–31. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame analysis. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Halloy, Arnaud, & Naumescu, Vlad (2012). Learning spirit possession: An introduction. Ethnos 77(2):155–76.Google Scholar
Hanks, William (1996). Exorcism and the description of participant roles. In Silverstein, Michael & Urban, Greg (eds.), Natural histories of discourse, 160–220. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Haustein, Jörg (2011). Embodying the spirit(s): Pentecostal demonology and deliverance discourse in Ethiopia. Ethnos 76(4):534–52.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, & Atkinson, J. Maxwell (1984). Introduction. In Atkinson, J. Maxwell & Heritage, John (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis, 1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, & Clayman, Stephen (2010). Talk in action: Interactions, identities and institutions. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hollenweger, Walter J. (1997). Pentecostalism: Origins and developments worldwide. Peabody: Hendrickson.Google Scholar
Hunt, Stephen (1998). Managing the demonic: Some aspects of the neo-Pentecostal deliverance ministry. Journal of Contemporary Religion 13(2):215–30.Google Scholar
International Office for Migration (2007). IOM mapping exercise: Nigeria. London: IOM. Online: http://unitedkingdom.iom.int/sites/default/files/doc/mapping/IOM_NIGERIA.pdf; accessed February 2015.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1989). Preliminary notes on a possible metric which provides for a ‘standard maximum’ silence of approximately one second in conversation. In Roger, Derek & Bull, Peter (eds.), Conversation: An interdisciplinary approach, 166–96. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In Lerner, Gene H. (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation, 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kay, William K. (2009). Pentecostalism. London: SCM Press.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb (1997). Religious language. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:47–71.Google Scholar
Klass, Morton (2003). Mind over mind: The anthropology and psychology of spirit possession. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Lambek, Michael (1989). From disease to discourse: Remarks on the conceptualization of trance and spirit possession. In Ward, Coleen. A. (ed.), Altered states of consciousness and mental health, 36–61. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Levelt, Willem J. M., & Kelter, Stephanie (1982). Surface form and memory in question answering. Cognitive Psychology 14:78–106.Google Scholar
Lewis, Ioan M. (1989). Ecstatic religion: A study of shamanism and spirit possession. 2nd edn.London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, Tanya (2012). When God talks back: Understanding the American evangelical relationship with God. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Lynn, Christopher Dana (2013). ‘The wrong Holy Ghost’: Discerning the Apostolic gift of discernment using a signaling and systems theoretical approach. Ethos 41(2):223–47. doi:10.1111/etho.12016Google Scholar
Malia, Linda (2001). A fresh look at a remarkable document: Exorcism: The report of a commission convened by the bishop of Exeter. Anglican Theological Review 83(1):65–88.Google Scholar
Martin, David (2002). Pentecostalism: The world their parish. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit (1995). Magic, mermaids and modernity: The attraction of Pentecostalism in Africa. Etnofoor 8(2):47–67.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit (1999). Translating the devil. Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit (2004). Christianity in Africa: From African independent to Pentecostal charismatic churches. Annual Review of Anthropology 33:447–74.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, Samuel (1999). Demonic attributions in non-delusional disorders. Psychopathology 32:252–59.Google Scholar
Placido, Barbara (2001). It's all to do with words: An analysis of spirit possession in the Venzuelan cult of Maria Lionza. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Insitute 7(2):207–24.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey; Schegloff, Emmanuel, A.; & Jefferson, Gail (eds.) (1995). Lectures on conversation, vols. 1 & 2. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emmanuel, & Sacks, Harvey (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica 7(4):289–327.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (ed.) (1993). Framing in discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, Matt (2014). Ritual textuality: Pattern and motion in performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Rijk (2001). Time and transcultural technologies of the self in the Ghanaian diaspora. In Corten, André and Marshall-Fratani, Ruth (eds.), Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, 216–34. London: Hurst & Companion.Google Scholar
Versteeg, Peter (2011). Deliverance and exorcism in anthropological perspective. In Kay, William K. & Parry, Robin (eds.), Exorcism and deliverance: Multidisciplinary studies, 120–38. Milton Keynes: Paternoster.Google Scholar
Versteeg, Peter, & Droogers, A. F. (2007). A typology of domestication in exorcism. Culture and Religion 8(1):15–32.Google Scholar