Cultivating Prayer

Abstract

Abstract A central function of language is to establish and maintain a sense of continuity and well-being throughout the life course. Language provides a medium for making sense out of past events and coping with the unpredictability of the future. This endeavor involves sorting out temporal-causal orderings of events (i.e., what did/ did not or will/will not happen) and imbuing them with moral castings (i.e., what should/should not have happened or should/should not happen). All levels of language are recruited to this end, including genre (Bakhtin 1981, 1986). Every community has a repertoire of genres that organize particular events and trajectories in terms of conventional structurings, understandings, and sentiments.