ABSTRACT

This chapter examines Roy Rappaport’s theory of ritual from the point of view of work on linguistic ideology. The fundamental feature of language for Rappaport is its creative potential; it allows human beings to fashion a seemingly infinite number of meaningful worlds for themselves. This characteristic of language confers immense adaptive advantage on the human species, for it allows its members to adapt to new environments quickly without giving up the flexibility they will need to adapt to yet other environment. Turning first to self-referential messages, come immediately to the issue of the performative nature of ritual. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, several prominent anthropologists took up Austin’s hints about the similarity of ritual acts to performative speech acts and formulated a performative theory of ritual. The brief remarks of the Togolese Kabre man quoted earlier indicate that Rappaport is not alone in his view of ritual as an engine for the production of reliable messages.