Belief Metaphor, and Rhetoric: the Mormon Practice of Testimony Bearing

Like a chocolate truffle, they can inspire delicious anticipation, or, with the dulling of the taste buds that comes from overindulgence, they may strongly turn us off. But in either case, unlike other words we daily throw at each other in our very verbal society, they are never just there. They key us, they prompt us, they require us to respond. To the non-Mormon, to someone who hasn’t heard them in at times emotional and at times boring contexts, these words in a testimony are almost incomprehensible. To be sure, the words still carry their dictionary definitions, but the nonMormon hearers lack the context--the living, the folding over and over again of experience and significance, like the butter and dough of a warm, flaky croissant. Mormons have saturated these words with ritual and mystical meaning--as well as with personal, living meaning--to the point that these words have layer, upon layer, upon layer of references. The most simple of words--"I want to bear you my testimony"--become dense, multi-vocalic, ritual signs. These kinds of words and their relation to the community have been compared to generations of leaves that compose the forest floor. With the annual fall of new leaves they become more compacted. Over time they decompose into the rich soil which nurtures the trees and a host of secondary flowers and shrubs. Because these words form part of a complex system, corn-