discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 108 108 Intercultural Communication Peru is about the only other Spanish-speaking country in which that phrase would be understood. A Language Horror Story When I was an inexperienced missionary, it was necessary for me to attend school discipline meetings. Teachers who were reporting infractions of students often showed intercepted notes to the committee. I looked at one note and, eager to learn the language, asked about the phrase unesisu. I was informed it meant “she is pregnant.” Several weeks later, new missionaries Robert and Peggy Perry arrived, and I was called upon to introduce them in church. Robert showed up at the last minute without Peggy. He explained that due to her pregnancy she was too ill to come. Utilizing my meager knowledge of the language, I introduced him. All went well until I explained that his wife was absent because unesisu. The congregation exploded into shocked laughter because I had implied that the missionary wife was illegitimately pregnant! 1 —Charles Gailey Power and Beauty Language is powerful. Winston Churchill’s speeches bolstered British morale during the horrific bombing raids of World War II. The writings of William Carey awakened Protestantism to its responsibility for the Great Commission. John R. Mott’s speeches on college campuses and his slogan “The evangelization of the world in this generation” inspired university students by the thousands to offer themselves as missionaries. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech energized the American Civil Rights Movement. The powerful and the powerless of every culture use language to express themselves. The powerful use it to perpetuate their vision of the world while the powerless often use satirical proverbs to express their distaste of the powerful and to pass on survival mechanisms. One Haitian proverb, for example, says, “When the chicken is tied up, the cockroach can lecture him.” Africans generally give descriptive names to expatriate missionaries, names that can express both tender feelings and satire. For instance, Lorraine Shultz was called Dez Para Oito (“Ten to Eight”) because of her insistence that students at the Tavane Bible School in Mozambique be present in the dining area at 10 minutes before 8:00. William Esselstyn was called Masithulele (“Let us calm down”) because that is what he said when discussions became heated. Elmer Schmelzenbach was called Isisu Siyaduma (“The stomach growls”) because his stomach would rumble loudly. Amy Crofford was called “She who walks at noon” because of her habit of walking to her children’s school at midday to
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 109 Intercultural Communication 109 pick them up for lunch (something people in Côte d’Ivoire thought strange in the heat of the day). Good leaders will be sensitive to what language can do, not only in a positive way but also negatively since language issues can tear apart social groups such as a church. Sometimes language speaks powerfully through the use of labels that negatively identify people by their geographic or ethnic origins. Such labels are often an evaluative response expressing contempt and suspicion in contrast to an understanding response. Labels considered racist may evoke such powerful emotions that their usage can start riots. As mission workers learn a language, they must stay away from such labels and must call on believers not to use language that reinforces negative biases. A good principle to follow is to call people what they prefer to be called. Of course, even there, things can be complicated. For example, some Americans with ancestral roots in Africa want to be called African-American while others prefer Black. Generic words such as “people” should be used wherever possible, thus avoiding this issue. Language enables people to express awesome ideas in picturesque ways. For example, in many cultures a person is said to love with the heart. Some African languages say that people love with the liver. In the Marshall Islands one loves with the throat. In Fongbe, a language of <strong>Southern</strong> Benin, one expresses loving tenderness by saying, “I accept your smell.” In the U.S. a person with a great deal of courage can be said to have a lot of guts, while in Italy that person is described as having a strong liver. Such varied ways of expressing the same idea illustrate why language is more of an art form than something precise like 2+2=4. Basic Principles Some facts about language: 1. Natural languages used for ordinary communication differ from the formal languages constructed for use in logic and in computers. Unlike natural languages, those formal languages have finite vocabulary lists and limited grammatical constructions. 2. Natural language is a cultural universal that is used by even the most remote, cut-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world people group. Though languages vary greatly, they all are produced by the same biological mechanism and intellectual apparatus. This means the clicking sounds of some African languages are not made because Africans have a special click-producing mechanism in their mouths or throats. The same can be said for the rolled or trilled “r’s” of Romance languages like Italian and Spanish. 3. Every natural language is complex. Cultural evolutionists of a century ago who divided the world into primitive people and civilized people thought that language development proceeded lockstep from simple to
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