Toward a poetics of divine languages

This review highlights three central issues in Yelle's book, namely the suggestion that an important component of religions is constituted of supposedly non-arbitrary languages and sign systems, and that such non-arbitrary sign systems are constructed through particular poetics (semiotic) strategies and have an essentially performative nature and function. Yelle also argues that Western modernity is characterized by a different regime of signs, one in which not only are signs no longer non-arbitrary, but non-arbitrariness itself is radically questioned and ultimately excluded from religion. The review points to the presence in religious discourses and practices of other dimensions that cannot be reduced to non-arbitrariness, but also to the possible existence of other discourses against non-arbitrariness in other cultures outside the modern West

Aesthetics · Arbitrariness · Epistemology · Function (biology) · Historicity (philosophy) · Iconicity · Linguistics · Modernity · Performative utterance · Poetics · Poetry · Semiotics · Sign (mathematics) · Sign system · Sociology · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Law · Mathematics · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions