Whatever Happened to Theolinguistics?
The branch of linguistics known as theolinguistics developed in the 1980s following two decades of popular and academic debate over the forms and functions of religious language. This paper describes the early initiatives, explains the nature of the contribution coming from linguistics, and draws a contrast between the hitherto very limited development of the subject by professional linguists and the large amount of descriptive and analytical work that still needs to be done. Particular attention is paid to the need for a global perspective, involving all languages, and to the role of pragmatics in explaining the choices made in religious discourse within individual languages. The approach is illustrated by a case study of the influence that the King James Bible had on English. The paper concludes by outlining the stages in a typical theolinguistic enquiry, and suggests that the subject has, after all, a future.