Glossolalia as Regressive Speech

Although there is considerable agreement about the phonological characteristics of religious glossolalia, based for the most part on utterances produced by native speakers of English, opinions differ widely about the causation of glossolalia. Most of the explanations are psychological or physiological.

It is demonstrated that these explanations are inadequate because they are ad hoc and because they do not comprehend enough data. One hypothesis is treated in detail, namely, that glossolalia is a product of trance.

This paper claims that a causative explanation for glossolalia must account for (1) religious glossolalic behaviour that is not demonstrably pathological or dissociative and (2) other spontaneous, ephemeral, and " meaningless " utterances in non-religious contexts.

It is suggested that there is a single phenomenon of linguistic " regression " whose basic component is a stream of speech produced unconsciously with early-acquired rules of phonation but more or less consciously modified according to socially meaningful values and attitudes.

It would appear, therefore, that there is a broad spectrum of anomalous speech of which religious glossolalia is only one manifestation. Moreover, although physiological-psychological states are not irrelevant to glossolalic output, socio-cultural factors are also determinant.