Divine Linguistics

English 338 (Linguistics) is one of my favorite courses to teach.

Language is a miracle and its intricacies endlessly fascinating.

We can give commands by asking questions (“Could you have this report typed by 5:00?).

We can perform indirect speech acts, asking an obnoxious patron for quiet in a movie theater by saying “Can you speak louder into your cell phone? I can almost hear the film.”

Or we can load questions by using presupposition triggers (“Have you stopped beating your wife”?), a popular political ploy.

Yet fascinating as all this is, I yearn for a relationship that does not require decoding or subterfuge, a relationship of pure being and love.

This is what I find with those closest to me and this, I hope, is what I will one day experience with God.

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