Language and the Image of God: Language Power, Language Play, and Promises to Keep:
James Vanden Bosch, Professor of English
Minds in the Making

Editor's note: This address was presented at a conference of the International Association  for  the  Promotion  of  Christian  Higher  Education in Moscow in August 2005.

Introduction

It's probably fair to assume that all of us gathered here at this conference hold many beliefs and assumptions in common-some form of mere Christianity, for instance, as a basic set of beliefs and assumptions.   It's also probably safe to assume that most of us have been developing a more or less Christian view of language over the years as well. I say "developing" because for many of us this is an ongoing enterprise, even if we're not always aware of the work involved.

But a Christian view of language almost certainly continues to be a work in process. We regularly absorb new information about language-the meaning and the effects of language change, for instance, or the nature of animal communication, or language acquisition in children, or language and the brain, or artificial intelligence and computational linguistics, or national language policies, or the costs and consequences of the failure to educate minority students in the majority language of a culture, or language death in the 21st century.   Whenever we take in such information, we are probably involved in small and large adjustments of our more or less Christian view of language.

Christian Views of Language and Language Study

Far too many students, and far too many educated adults as well, think of language as a very poor investment of their time and energy; it is all too common to hear from many of them that they hate poetry or literary study, that they are painfully insecure about their communication skills, and that only a pedant could be interested in such things as grammar, rhetoric, style, and poetry. Yet most of us consider language to be one of God's great gifts to humanity.

If my experience of this situation is correct, something has gone badly askew in this area of the curriculum, and it may be the case that the large gap between our general assumptions about language and the consequences of our linguistic and literary education has come about because of the way we are teaching or allowing our students to think about language and literature.

If that is the case, and I think that it is, it may be useful to remind ourselves of what we include in a Christian view of language and then go on to ask what difference such a Christian view might make for our students.

I will first of all rehearse here, briefly, what my colleague William Vande Kopple has written about the gift of language ("Toward a Christian View of Language," in Contemporary Literary Theory: A Christian Appraisal [Eerdmans, 1991]), and then I want to go on to explore a handful of related ideas in relationship to Christian education.

Vande Kopple highlights several major propositions in this essay:

1. God is the giver of the gift of language.

2. As far as we know, humans are the only recipients of an innate capacity for language and the only creatures able to make use of all the advantages that language brings us.

3. Language itself is marked by many features, including innateness, intricacy, and creativity.

4. Language allows humans to use and develop symbols and concepts.

5. Humans are called by God to be responsible users of the gift of language.

"Their Lonely Betters"

These propositions are all worth pursuing and developing, each in its own right and all together as a coherent package of assertions, but the focus of this talk today will instead be on the implications of a Christian view of language for people involved in Christian education. You have noted from the title of this presentation that I intend to spend some time on the subjects of language power, language play, and the image of God. I intend to do this by a brief study of a poem that I have been meditating on for some time, and I think you will see why this poem speaks to us on this occasion and also where it allows us to go with the larger subject. The poem is "Their Lonely Betters" by W.H. Auden (published in 1950).

A few preliminary notes are in order. First, this poem is done in a typically Audenesque way-with light comic touches, and in a conversational, not a declamatory, manner. Second, it is marked by playfulness, a feature that I want to return to later. Third, although it addresses the essential differences between human and non-human creatures in relationship to the gift of language, this poem was written twenty years before the modern scientific arguments about animal communication began to develop; most of the research and controversy about chimpanzees and American Sign Language did not occur until the 1970s. Auden's poem is a reflective or meditative piece of work, and it is aimed mainly at elucidating the nature of what it means to be human.

There are many things to be said about this poem, but I'd like to focus on those features that contribute specifically to a Christian view of language. What follows is a quick listing of those elements of the poem.

• This garden and its occupants-the speaker, animals, and vegetation-make noises, but words are specific kinds of noises that separate humans from the other mortal things found in Auden's garden. Moreover, Auden promises in the first stanza to explain why it is that humans have words, while birds and vegetables do not.

• Human beings have Christian names-they are marked and known by God in relational ways that animals and plants are not. It's not that God doesn't know and care for the non-human creatures, but God's relationship with humans seems to be of a different-a special-sort.

• Human language is productive-it allows humans to name and refer to new things in their world in ways that animals cannot. Robins, for instance, have a significant repertoire of sounds and songs, but robins do not use those sounds to refer to and deal with new realities and new needs in ways that humans respond.

• Pairing off, mating, and reproduction are shared creaturely phenomena, but there is something qualitatively different between reproduction or mating and love-between the pollination of plants and the mating of non-human animals, for instance, and all that is entailed in human love.

• Humans are capable of lying, and animals are not, an indication of the larger conclusion that Auden is moving toward, namely, that humans are engaged in, and are citizens of, a moral universe that animals and plants have no knowledge of or need for.

• Animals are (we generally assume) not aware of their own mortality, that their days are numbered, and that their bodies grow old and then die. Humans are, generally, very aware of this fact, and that awareness is, once again, something that separates humans from the other animals. The fact that our days are numbered is related to our awareness of being judged for what we do with those days-assuming responsibility for the days we are given.

• Auden refers to rhythm and rhyme as the means humans use for "assuming responsibility for time." Rhythm and rhyme are basic human uses of language, features of song and of poetry, and thus connected to language in its ritualistic, playful, celebrative, and religious uses.   Humans use language, rhythm, and rhyme as a way to measure time and to account for their use of it; animals have no similar needs, abilities, or practices.

• We humans are the "lonely betters" referred to in the title of the poem and at the beginning of its last stanza. In significant ways, we humans are superior to the other animals, but we are also lonely in our superiority, cut off from full communion with the world of nature because of our human nature-separate from those creatures whose lives are not lived in the moral universe that humans belong to-and not in full communion with ourselves, with other humans, or with the Creator. Our longing for that full communion is one way of describing our loneliness.

• "Words are for those with promises to keep"-humans live in a moral universe, a world of promises made and promises to be kept. Language is engaged in the structure of the moral world, because it is with words that we make promises, and it is with our lives that we keep or violate them.

Language and Human Nature

As you can see, this poem provides rich resources for further reflecting on a Christian view of language. In this brief reading of the poem, I have only begun to note the relevant information expressed or implicit in this poem. In it, Auden assumes what must be for many listeners a familiar Christian view of human nature, for it is impossible for us to think for very long about the nature of language without thinking about what it means to be human. A theory of language assumes a theory of human nature.

This is true for the assumptions in this poem as well. Made in the image of God, we humans are made for relationship, made for community, made for communion, made for love. Made in the image of God, we humans benefit from the gift of language: God can communicate with us, and we can communicate with God, with one another, and with other humans from the past and in the future. Made in the image of God, we have the great gift of life and of the freedom to pursue, explore, and know God and his creation. Made in the image of God, we humans are meant to be makers and keepers of promises, living in covenant with God and with one another. We are meant for obedience and service, and for the prospering and thriving that accompany such faithfulness .   Made in God's image, we humans are built for beauty, for delight, for pleasure; we are meant for joy. Made in the image of God, we should not have to be told to speak the truth in love; language is the faculty that allows humans to do that naturally-it's how we were made, and what we were given language for.

Clearly, this poem also assumes basic convictions about the brokenness of the human situation, about fallen humanity. We are made for relationship, for communion, for love, and yet the fall has driven us far away from God, from one another, and from ourselves; our experience of life is marked by loneliness, isolation, and alienation. We are made for life, but we are marked by and for death. Made for the making and keeping of promises, we nonetheless try to deceive God, ourselves, and others. Made for beauty and delight, we have destroyed what is beautiful in ourselves, in others, and in the rest of creation.

And the great gift of language participates in the general ruin of humanity. We use language to destroy, deceive, and manipulate others, not to love them. We use language to make promises we don't keep and to make promises we should never make and should not keep.   We use language not to be accountable for time but to excuse our brokenness and to justify how we use the gift of life.

Language and Education

Allow me to list a few implications of a Christian view of language in the world of Christian education. I'll refer to what are primarily working assumptions, assumptions that should manifest themselves in the curriculum and the classroom, assumptions that have mainly to do with the attitudes and values of teachers, administrators, and those who plan and implement curriculum. I'll try not to get into curricular matters or pedagogy in any explicit way, although such practical concerns are often very near at hand.

A. Although language is a significant part of what it means to be human, it is not the essence of a person's value in God's eye, and therefore a Christian education must not undervalue humans who are without language or who experience language impairments or deficits.

B. Because a person's language is an integral part of a person's identity, a Christian education must do as much as possible to honor the home language or dialect of every student. The belief that language is a gift from God cannot be held consistently if only some languages or dialects are so honored.

C. Because some languages have come to be accepted as the language of wider communication, a Christian education must help students learn how to use those languages for work in the academy, the professions, and the world beyond the limits of the home language.

D. Students in a Christian school must learn what a great gift language is-a gift to be studied, honored, and recognized in others.

E. Students in a Christian school must learn some of the basic features of language in general-the productivity of language, its intricacy, its connection to meaning, its connection to our moral nature, its creativity, and its connection to community, communion, and love.

F. Christian students must learn to recognize and practice the responsible uses of language and how to analyze and understand irresponsible uses of language.

G. Christian students must learn other languages, to be able to communicate with other cultures and other times.

H. Christian students must learn how to be effective speakers, listeners, readers, and writers.

I. Christian students must learn about the various genres of written and spoken communication, the standards by which these genres are evaluated, and producing and evaluating such genres.

J. A Christian education must allow students to have authentic experiences of God's revelation to humans via language-authentic experiences of the Scriptures, experiences that allow the students to learn how to read, study, and understand God's Word.

K. A Christian education must allow students to have significant experiences of authentic human responses to God and to God's Word-hymns, prayers, poems, sermons, discussions, and reflections that demonstrate the wide variety of human linguistic responses to God and to Scripture.

L. Christian students must have significant experiences of language related to human love for one another and for God-the language of love must be one of the dialects of human language that everyone recognizes for its centrality in human living and thriving.

M. A Christian education must supply students with good working knowledge of what it means to be creatures "with promises to keep," in Auden's words-learning about this feature as a divine gift and as a human imperative, learning by precept, by example, and by practice.    

Language Power and Language Play

Language is a great gift, and it is a great gift in large part because of its enormous power-it has the power to describe, analyze, and change the world, the power to transmit knowledge and human achievements over vast periods of time and over great chasms of culture, the power to tell the truth and to deceive, the power to commune with God, with ourselves, and with one another, the power to change the way that we perceive reality, the power to imagine alternative states of being, the power to make people desire certain ways of being and to work for their attainment, the power to change people's minds and hearts and spirits.

People who develop even some part of the potential of this gift are, in turn, given access to great power in the world of ideas and action.   Christian educators must always be aware of the enormous power that students can possess because of the development of the gift of language.

But power is not the only notable feature of language. Here are brief passages from two British researchers whose emphases have gained more and more attention over the last few years. The passages that follow come from their work on the teaching of the language arts in general (David Crystal) and on second-language learning (Guy Cook).   Here is Crystal, from his book Language Play (Penguin Books, 1998):

The aim of this book is to . . . ask why the playful (or 'ludic') function of language is important for our appreciation of language as a whole. Ludic language has traditionally been a badly neglected subject of linguistic enquiry-at best treated as a topic of marginal interest, at worst never mentioned at all. Yet it should be at the heart of any thinking we do about linguistic issues. (p. 1)

I look back over the course of child language acquisition, and suggest that, if we do have a 'language instinct,' as some authors have maintained, then it is indeed chiefly for language play. I shall go so far as to claim that it is a sign of communicative breakdown, or even pathology, when people avoid playing with language. (pp. 7-8)

That is why a school world without language play is so alien, and perhaps one of the reasons why the progress of so many children towards literacy and advanced language skills has been so slow....

I cannot prove it, but I do believe that the more children are given opportunities to play with language and respond to language play, as they move up through the school, the more sophisticated will be their eventual prowess in the verbal arts. (p. 220)

And here is Guy Cook, in his book Language Play, Language Learning (Oxford U. Press, 2000):

Here is a phenomenon worth investigating, and one which has on the whole been neglected, or at least sidelined, in the study of language and language learning. In this book I shall bring together a range of normally dissociated activities under the heading of language play, though there is clearly a great deal of work to be done to specify more precisely both the similarities and the differences between them. The claim of this book is that although language play is manifested through a variety of different activities, these are expressions of a single underlying phenomenon, which is of particular relevance to mental adaptation, for individuals, for societies, and for the species. Though it appears superfluous, it is not actually so. Disconnection from reality, disruption and subversion of social structures, and the introduction of random elements have particular benefits for all of us, and that is perhaps why we are so fond of them, even when they are forbidden. They are there to be exploited to our advantage in many areas of human activity, including language learning. The general purpose of this book is to offer an exploration, and at least a partial explanation, of why and how this might be so. (pp. 4-5)

One intention of this book has been to consider what might happen if, in the study of language and of language learning, we try to turn the usual order of importance inside out: to make the periphery the centre and the centre the periphery, so that language play is no longer seen as a trivial and optional extra but as the source of language knowledge, use, and activity. In order to do this, we need to engage in a willing suspension of deeply-rooted attitudes towards language play, and to its role in language teaching in particular: to discipline ourselves to see it as profound as well as trivial, as adult as well as childlike, as something which precedes rather than follows on from other more 'useful' activities. Above all we should not see it as something to fill a free moment, only to be guiltily abandoned when a more important duty appears.   (pp. 204-205)

So allow me to add one more assumption to the handful I have already adduced:

N. Christian education must emphasize the importance of language play, both in language learning and in everyday life, in ordinary and in artistic forms of expression. Playfulness with language should be a recognizable feature of student life, in the curriculum, in the classroom, and in the larger world of schooling.

Here is a set of assumptions and dispositions that probably are already part of the working equipment of teachers, the curriculum, the classroom, and students in Christian education. Language play and language power are elements of the great gift of language.   Developing, directing, and harnessing that power will continue to be one of the great challenges of a fully Christian education. Learning to capitalize on the human creativity and playfulness that comes naturally with language may be one of the ways to help our students experience the great joy of having this gift. It may make our students less resistant, less insecure about their communication skills, less sullen in relationship to the authority of experts, and more joyful in the making and keeping of promises.

Putting these assumptions to work, allowing these dispositions to be actualized in the classroom and beyond, could do a great deal to humanize and Christianize the students we work with, the schools that they learn in, and the societies in which these students take their place.

And if, in the process, we create more and more students who love language, who enjoy the play of this powerful gift, we will have contributed something significant to the coming Kingdom of God, and we will ourselves have kept promises worth keeping.

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