Abstract
The chapter examines free text entries in the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of “Spirituality” written in response to the questions: “How would you define the term spirituality?” and “How would you define the term religion?” The aim is to explore subjective understandings by paying attention to the language use of participants, following the assumption that the language use of people writing texts about what they would call “spirituality” or “religion” will provide new insight in subjective and cultural meaning of both terms. Therefore, the chapter opts for a decisive bottom-up perspective on semantics which is realized by a corpus linguistic approach looking for linguistic patterns with a particular focus on key word analysis and semantic classification. In detail, the chapter addresses the following questions: Can we identify linguistic patterns in subjective definition s of “spirituality” and “religion” that differ (1) by cultural-linguistic context , (2) by semantic context, and (3) by personal context (“spiritual”/“religious” self-identifications). Main results related to these questions are: (1) “Spirituality” and “religion” compete in the same semantic field being more similar than expected; the cultural-linguistic difference between the German and the US sample is rather low. (2) Directly compared to “spirituality,” the semantic profile of “religion” is quite reduced to systemic aspects, while “spirituality” attracts a wide range of possible meanings in the field of contrasting poles like “body and soul,” “knowing and feeling,” “spirit and nature,” “connectedness and openness.” (3) Language use differs significantly according to “spiritual”/“religious” self-identification so that a specific set of key words for each group of participants can be identified: words that are both typically chosen and avoided while speaking about “spirituality” or “religion.”
A comprehensive version and all results of this chapter have been first published in Altmeyer et al. (2015).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
We mark direct quotations of key words by using inverted commas. If the same key word occurs in both languages, we use a slash to reflect the translations.
References
Altmeyer, S. (2015). Exploring the unknown: The language use of German RE-students writing texts about God. British Journal of Religious Education, 37, 20–36.
Altmeyer, S., Klein, C., Keller, B., Silver, C. F., Hood, R. W., & Streib, H. (2015). Subjective definitions of spirituality and religion. An exploratory study in Germany and the USA. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (in press).
Ammerman, N. T. (2013). Spiritual but not religious? Beyond binary choices in the study of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52, 258–278.
Baker, P. (2010). Sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Bondi, M., & Scott, M. (Eds.). (2010). Keyness in texts. Studies in corpus linguistics (Vol. 41). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Büssing, A. (2006). “Spiritualität”—worüber reden wir? [“Spirituality”—What are we talking about?] In A. Büssing, T. Ostermann, M. Glöckler, & P. F. Matthießen (Eds.), Spiritualität, Krankheit und Heilung—Bedeutung und Ausdrucksformen der Spiritualität in der Medizin (pp. 69–84). Frankfurt/M.: Verlag für Akademische Schriften.
Dunning, T. (1993). Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics, 19, 61–74.
Francis, L. J. (1997). The psychology of gender differences in religion: A review of empirical research. Religion, 27, 81–96.
Greenwald, D. F., & Harder, D. W. (2003). The dimensions of spirituality. Psychological Reports, 92, 975–980.
Habermas, J. (1984). Reason and the rationalization of society. The theory of communicative action (Vol. 1, T. MacCarthy, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1987). Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason. The theory of communicative action (Vol. 2, T. MacCarthy, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press.
Heelas, P., Woodhead, L., Seel, B., Szerszynski, B., & Trusting, K. (2005). The spiritual revolution: Why religion is giving way to spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hood, R. W., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion. An empirical approach. New York: Guilford.
Houtman, D., & Aupers, S. (2007). The spiritual turn and the decline of tradition: The spread of post-Christian spirituality in 14 Western countries, 1981–2000. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 305–320.
Keller, B., Klein, C., Swhajor-Biesemann, A., Silver, C. F., Hood, R. W., & Streib, H. (2013). The semantics of “Spirituality” and related self-identifications: A comparative study in Germany and the USA. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 35, 1–30.
La Cour, P., Ausker, N. H., & Hvidt, N. C. (2012). Six understandings of the word “spirituality” in a secular country. Archive for the Psychology of Religion, 34, 63–81.
Mahlberg, M. (2005). English general nouns: A corpus theoretical approach. Studies in corpus linguistics (Vol. 20). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
OECD. (2011). Education at a glance 2011. Paris: OECD Publishing.
OECD. (2012). OECD Factbook 2011–2012. Paris: OECD Publishing.
O’Keeffe, A., & McCarthy, M. (Eds.). (2012). The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics. Milton Park: Routledge.
Osgood, C. E. (1962). Studies on the generality of affective meaning systems. American Anthropologist, 17, 10–28.
Schlehofer, M. M., Omoto, A. M., & Adelman, J. R. (2008). How do “religion” and “spirituality” differ? Lay definitions among older adults. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47, 411–425.
Scott, M. (2012). WordSmith tools version 6: Manual. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scott, M., & Tribble, C. (2006). Textual patterns: Key words and corpus analysis in language education, Studies in corpus linguistics (Vol. 22). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Smart, N. (1998). Dimensions of the sacred: An anatomy of the world’s beliefs. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Snider, J. G., & Osgood, C. E. (1969). Semantic differential technique: A sourcebook. Chicago: Aldine.
Streib, H., & Hood, R. W. (2011). “Spirituality” as privatized experience-oriented religion: Empirical and conceptual perspectives. Implicit Religion, 14(4), 433–453.
Streib, H., Hood, R. W., Keller, B., Csöff, R. -M., & Silver, C. (2009). Deconversion. Qualitative and quantitative results from cross-cultural research in Germany and the United States of America. Research in Contemporary Religion (Vol. 5). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Streib, H., & Keller, B. (2007). Spirituality and deconversion: Cross-cultural research results. Paper for the International Conference on Spirituality, Prague 2007-IX-21.
Stubbs, M. (2010). Three concepts of keywords. In M. Bondi & M. Scott (Eds.), Keyness in texts. Studies in corpus linguistics (Vol. 41, pp. 21–42). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Tognini-Bonelli, E. (2001). Corpus linguistics at work. Studies in corpus linguistics (Vol. 6). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Utsch, M., & Klein, C. (2011). Religion, Religiosität, Spiritualität: Bestimmungsversuche für komplexe Begriffe [Religion, religiousness, spirituality: Attempts for the definition of complex terms]. In C. Klein, H. Berth, & F. Balck (Eds.), Gesundheit—Religion—Spiritualität. Konzepte, Befunde und Erklärungsansätze (pp. 25–45). Weinheim: Juventa.
Woodhead, L. (2007). Gender differences in religious practice and significance. In J. A. Beckford & N. J. Demerath III (Eds.), The Sage handbook of the sociology of religion (pp. 566–586). Los Angeles: Sage.
Wynne, M. (2008). Searching and concordancing. In A. Lüdeling & M. Kytö (Eds.), Corpus linguistics. An international handbook (Vol. 1, pp. 706–737). Berlin: de Gruyter.
Zinnbauer, B. J., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Rye, M. S., Butter, E. M., Belavich, T. G., et al. (1997). Religion and spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 549–564.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Altmeyer, S., Klein, C. (2016). “Spirituality” and “Religion”—Corpus Analysis of Subjective Definitions in the Questionnaire. In: Streib, H., Hood, Jr., R. (eds) Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21244-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21245-6
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)