Use of language and communication among the Pentecostal Evangelical Charismatic Churches in Durban, South Africa

Abstract

The significance of language and communication is more relevant in multifarious cultural settings similar to South Africa. Churches are at the vanguard of using religious languages to communicate and express ideas, emotions, and convictions to diverse congregants. We contextualize a linguistic element that the emergence of new Pentecostal and evangelical charismatic churches has not only raised a complexity of language and communication but has also become ambivalent and paradoxical in nature. As a result, we highlight the relationship between language and religion and how language could be a medium for the transmission of religious communication and debates in a multi-cultural setting. Using qualitative methodology, data was gathered among 20churches in the Durban area of South Africa, to understand the flow of linguistic characteristics set up to serve spiritual interests. The results show that the problem associated with religious language has been an age long and in recent times, attention has also shifted to an absurd linguistic problem. This study has, to an extent, found that religious language differs from everyday communication, and there is no common ground between these miotic and pragmatic use of language and the contending power of spirit-filled languages. We found that as modern Christian churches emerge, a series of issues have resurfaced, including the denotation and connotation of language, communication of religion and pragmatic motivations in behaviour; the struggle between interfaith and the channel of communication remains at the edge of church denominations. To ensure effective use of language and communication, it is highlighted that if language should be used for religious communication and debates, it needs to be used in a systematic, spiritual and theological forms. Pentecostal churches should identify and establish a common ground between semiotic and pragmatic use of language and the contending power of spirit-filled languages. The paper is important as preachers, communicators and the world of scholarship may benefit from the study in understanding the spiritual implication of language and communication when passing across messages to their various congregations and audiences.