If "rhetoric" means a "special and unique form of speaking," you have to say there's a Mormon rhetoric.
Most Utahns, even those who aren't Mormon, hear it in the catch-phrases that tumble through the culture ("release him with a hearty vote of thanks," "spiritual feast"), but "Mormon-speak" runs much deeper than that. Mormons have a unique way of arranging words in sentences, of emphasizing certain nouns and choosing certain verbs. I'm not a linguist, but I hear the easy cadence of 19th century America in traditional Mormon speech. People tend to speak as the gentle townfolk speak in classic Westerns. You hear it mostly in the state's outlying areas, in the rural wards. But the rhetoric runs all the way through the culture."I would indeed be ungrateful today if I did not stand on my feet and express my feelings. . . ."
Outsiders are often charmed by the quaintness of such language. It has the lilt of speech by New England Quakers. No surprise, of course, since so many early LDS leaders (Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Brigham Young) were New England church-men.
The surprise is the rhetoric has survived a cross-continental journey and a trip through an entire century. Words and expressions such as "desirous," "intone" and "labor in the field" were on the lips of early American pulpit pounders such as Cotton Mather.
It is the English of the Puritans.
The English of the Book of Mormon.
And as the LDS Church grows, the language is becoming international.
When young missionaries go to foreign countries, they take our rhetoric with them. And there, it sometimes has a mystic tone about it, a form of speaking more original and odd than the Deseret alphabet.
Missionaries in Latin America, for instance, are proficient in Spanish but not always sophisticated. They often translate Mormon-speak into Spanish word for word, and the native speakers pick it up. "We'll sing from page 195," for instance, becomes "Cantamos de la pagina 195," a phrase that sounds a bit surreal in Spanish. The word "bishop" (obispo) has a lofty "high church" feeling about it, while the word "ward" (barrio) feels folksy and "low church." So the phrase "your home ward bishop" comes across a bit like "your friendly, neighborhood cardinal."
It amuses me, too, that English speakers often see the Latin Mass as something of a secret chant. But in Spanish, which is 90 percent Latin, the words and phrases sound fairly natural, even understandable. It's Mormon jargon, with lines like "fiber of my being" and "my heart is full today," that has the eerie but pleasing aura of mystery about it. It becomes a special language for insiders.
"Brother Gomez," I remember one young missionary saying, "I'm functioning in my capacity as branch president today and would like you to give the invocation or benediction at an upcoming ordination."
The man slowly nodded his head "yes." It was pure faith. I know he had no idea in heaven what he'd just been asked to do.