The Use of Religious Language in Karen Armstrong’s Buddha

Abstract

Generally speaking, unlike ordinary language (OL), religious language (RL), which is normally used for communicating one's religious faith and experience, is deemed more appropriate for the dissemination of religious wisdom. The two languages, according to scholars, are distinguishable. For one thing, RL, which is primarily used to serve both a religious purpose and a religious context, is necessarily in possession of something that OL is not. This paper attempts to show that, due to its close association with the use of metaphors, RL can better convey the Buddhist teachings.  To do that, it proposes to explore the notion of linguistic relativity in Buddhist theology using conceptual metaphor. It shall propose to display Armstrong's relative success in displaying some salient aspects of Gotama Buddha's wisdom teaching in her biography of the religious founder entitled Buddha (2004). The findings show that, with the use of RL (as opposed to OL), certain aspects of Buddhist transcendental teachings can be better illuminated. It is expected that these findings can help to enhance the important role of RL as a means for imparting religious content, particularly Gotama Buddha's (or GB's) wisdom which is the focus of the present study. It recommends reader understand someone's meaning through conceptual metaphor in communication. The authors suggest further research to investigate religious language by applying another approach.