Bird, Frederick. "Ritual as Communicative Action." In Jack N.

Lightstone & Frederick Bird,

Ritual and Ethnic Identity (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995, 23-52).

Rituals:
 Scripted – not usually spontaneous (although can permit some idiosyncrasy)
o more stylized – usually performed in a similar way
 Rituals are not just expressive, because they are usually restricted and scripted
 Can be re-enactments (eg. Hajj, communion, seder)
 Elaborate-idiosyncratic, personal, freer, unlimited
Versus
 Restricted – limited, structured, standardized
 Ritual is not pragmatically strategic, although there is obviously reason and
justification
 Customs are unreflective, routine, unconscious, expected
 Rituals are intentional, deliberate

Communicative element:
 Compact/shorthand but not necessarily simple
 Rituals communicate:
o Faith, religion, feelings, values, identity, social position, allegiance, legends,
myths, etc.
 Can be multi-faceted/multi-media:
o Words, songs, movement, music, gestures, staging, setting, time, etc.

Five aspects of communication:

1. Constitutive:
a. Constitutes a new situation/setting
i. Eg. Wedding, funeral, convocation, baptism
b. Or re-constitutes:
i. Returning regularly to Temple, Mosque, Church, etc.; getting married
again, etc.
2. self-representative:
a. performing a ritual shows you what you are and what is important to you
i. shows others too.
3. Expressive:
a. Allows expression of intense emotion
i. Eg funerals, weddings, birth
ii. Can allow ease of intense emotion – ie. Within a structured, restricted
context, only so much pain/joy is permitted to be expressed
iii. Allows one to express things hard to express or difficult to verbalize or
say to others
iv. Can connect pain/grief with healing/hope/faith
 v. Used for intimacy, esp. In private settings. Hugs, pecks, petnames, etc.
All communicate love.
4. Regulative: communicate values and rules that regulate social life
a. Rituals establish standards of thought, behaviour, morality, etc.
b. As a whole, rituals guide one’s moral life by establishing an overall aura
5. Invocative:
a. Bring about desired states or spirits, sacred realities, divinities
b. Often used to invoke blessing (or interaction from the sacred)
c. Blessing can be the peace of having performed the ritual, the status achieved
by performing it
d. These rituals are usually taboo outside the sacred time and place and powerful
within the right time and place (ie. You don’t eat the eucharist outside of
mass)