ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that symbols in ritual cannot be understood without a prior study of the nature of the communication medium of ritual in which they are embedded, in particular singing and dancing. The relative fixity of formalized language isolates it from the processes of historical linguistics and so a secondary result of formalization becomes the typical archaism of the language of traditional authority and even more the language of ritual. The effect of removing the possibility of alternatives from the mode of communication, as is done by formalization, makes what is being said beyond logic: its force is traditional authority, but disguised in that it has been accepted unconsciously before the event by the acceptance of the proper or the appropriate way of behaving. The most immediate fact which follows from looking at song and formalized oratory together is that we can see that the communication of traditional authority does not differ in kind from the communication of religion.
