This seminar discusses glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”) and cacophony in settings of fervent group prayer among Protestant Christians in Seoul. Ethnographic field data on prayer, preaching, music, and other features of Christian worship reveal how processes of semiotic intensification and the production of unintelligible speech contribute to collective experiences of spiritual contact. The analysis develops broader questions about “intensity” as a both an analytical category across disciplines and as a local cultural category in South Korea.
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