Jordan- that is neat your ward watched the whole talk.

I joined the Church in high school in 1985. I don’t really know how the earlier prophets/GA’s sounded. I have always been a reader more than a listener. This thread has me thinking it will be fun to go back and listen to some of their talks, not just read them!

Jordan, you are working through the ways that people bring their own things to the experience. It is not just keyed in the talks, but also has to be received and responded to harmoniously. The listeners and readers have an important role to play, as so many of the posts here mention, whether it is through their personal connection with a General Authority, the feeling of boredom versus heightened feeling, or something else. Chris (number 9) I like what Don Bradley develops. I do need to listen to his talk, since I missed it at Sunstone, but it seems he focuses on the internal textual issues. It is also important to see how reading itself is organized and taught.

The experience itself is not simply ones individuality in action but is something that is molded and structured by living in a religious society and being part of it. This idea of the social organization of hearing/reading and responding is important in the anthropology of language ideologies, or metapragmatics. it is the idea that there are socially organized ways of understanding what language is supposed to do and how it is supposed to work. These ideologies, among other metapragmatic forms, stand between the speaker/writer and the listener/reader. They join them.

The anthropology professor strikes. Yikes…

still I am fascinated by how people hear and read. Jordan’s question of when is something to be taken serious and when not is an important one.

For me, this became obvious when President Kimball gave his don’t kill the little birds speech. It dropped from popular consciousness like a stone in a lake. It seems the Brethren are aware that what they say is not simply received but must pass through an audience’s filters. While frustrating for them, this relationship between communities and authorities makes for an organic Mormonism that works.

Usually I’ve been a listener at conference. Then I will read the talks either online or in the Ensign.
The other day, I was at my mom’s and she had some old (2005) Conference CD’s. So I borrowed them and have listened to some of them this week during my long commute(included listening to my first Priesthood session!!). Speaking of that conf, I lack the ability to describe it, but it was fascinating to hear how Elder Bednar kept addressing the Priesthood as Bretheren. He was speaking on not just going on a mission but becoming a missionary. Somehow the way he said Bretheren was very powerful, for lack of a better word.

In general, it is amazing to hear the power in the voices and focus just on their voices and not watching them via video.

I appreciate what the brother said about how native Spanish brothers/sisters miss hearing the voice/tone of our leaders. I think we who can hear and see are also lucky! We get to hear the hymns,e tc and hear all those voices. For example, the fall 2007 Conf when there was that touching scene w/Elder Haight and Elder Holland as Elder Holland helped suppoort Elder Haight, even as Elder Haight spoke words of being a true disciple and having love for others. Those of us who got to witness that event got to see and learn something that those who only heard the Conf on CD or who read it later or who will read it years down the road will miss out on. (that is unless the people at lds.org put in a PS as a footnote to describe the beauty of what happened)

When at General Conf they show pictures of people/places, I feel bad that those who are blind miss out unless someone decribes it very well.

Other than this, I basically tend to prefer certain themes and relevant quotes (ie to my life) and focus on those.

So when are those cues given that a prophet is “acting as such”? What are the proper cues given to signal the authority of a statement. Of course there is the classic “thus saith the Lord” or “as the Lord liveth” forms that are employed in the scriptures and early speeches of the Brethren, but what of today?

General Conference itself, as a form of ritual practice, seems to entail a certain transfer and designation of authority to speech. But even that itself doesn’t go all the way for the members of the Church. I was talking with a member of my ward the other day and she commented to me that when a woman speaks at general conference she stops listening because that individual doesn’t have the authority (due to gender difference and lack of the priesthood) to speak for the Church.

So it seems that those cues that signal the metapragmatics of the Brethrens’ words doesn’t rest solely upon the words themselves, or on the pragmatics of “speaking/listening” (as General Conference, Stake Conference, or even Sacrament meeting goes), rather those signals are embedded in us throughout our the praxis of living as a member of the Church. It is in a very Durkheimian sense the collective consciousness of the lay members of the Church that helps decide the “holiness” of the words of the Brethren.

For example, one statement that has continually fascinated me is the admonishment by the Brethren to not watch rated R movies. Although this is continually stressed in many situations, especially amongst the youth, I continually come across members of the Church who do not believe that this it is a “sufficient commandment” (their words). So it seems to me that those words are mediated both through the individualized experience of individual members but also, if not more so, through the collective experience of lay members. Bourdieu…

This leaves these questions open…is the process of listening to the general authorities a democratic process? If not, how is it that members collectively determine when it is that the prophets are “acting as such”?

And if the individual experience of the spirit as confirmation plays a significant role (as I believe it does) then can the spirit specifically tell you that a prophet is not “acting as such” (Brigham Young, JD 6:100; JD 9:151)?

Of course, my reliance on the written statements of Joseph Smith goes directly to your issue of speaking and listening/reading and writing. Is the writing of general authorities’ statements another step in the signaling of authority to speak and necessity to listen? It certainly seems to be part of the process of canonization.

Fwiw, one of the biggest cues to how I read the Brethren’s words comes from some sense of relationship with them, gained from past experiences and also expressions of their personality (anecdotes, syntax etc).

So, perhaps strangely, the better I feel I ‘know’ the speaker, the more receptive I am to the holiness in the message.

Lately I’ve wished it wasn’t like this!

Urim and Thummin. Duh.