missionary-linguist

plural missionary-linguists · alternative missionary linguist

1. A missionary who seeks to study a people's language in order to facilitate religious conversion.

   Even the famous missionary-linguist J.G. Christaller could not break away from the spell of this 'priestcraft'-theory.

   1979, J.G. Platvoet, “The Akan Believer and his Religions”, in Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies, page 595

   4 more examples

   although we do not meet among the missionary linguists that marvellous variety of languages which excites our wonder, yet we find in them abundant evidences of a solid and practical scholarship

   1858, C. W. Russell, The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, page 29

   While he had fulfilled what was expected of him as a missionary linguist, his eagerness for the welfare of the Africans led him to occupy himself with other plans

   1881, John Ebenezer Honeyman Thomson, Memoir of George Thomson, Cameroon Mountains, West Africa, by one of his nephews, page 20

   the valuable work of the excellent and indefatigable missionary-linguist, the late Father Marcoux, on the Iroquois language, is about to be published by the Bureau of ethnology.

   1883, H. Hale, “The Iroquois institutions and language”, in Science, volume 2, number 36, page 497

   Many missionary-linguists leave the familiarity of their home and their social network to go spend many years (often decades) in local communities, learning the local language and local customs and beliefs.

   2006, Lenore A. Grenoble, Lindsay J. Whaley, Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization, page 196