'Life is full of challenging transitions. ... Our study gives us insight into the ways people draw upon language to give meaning and make sense of something that's challenging'
(Adobe photo)
As nearly 2 million Christian missionaries worldwide step off on long- and short-term assignments annually, a new study from UConn and University of Oklahoma researchers finds that upon return, they consistently draw on the same communication strategies to talk about their experiences abroad and the difficulties of returning home.
From the use of metaphors to the recalling of memorable messages, the missionaries included in the study also routinely pulled from biblical vernacular to describe how they were feeling and used the personification of God to find comfort in their situations, researchers say.
"This study helps us understand how people give meaning to difficult experiences and how people make sense of the changes that happen in their lives," says R. Amanda Cooper, an assistant professor in UConn's Department of Communication. "Life is full of challenging transitions, sometimes dramatic and sometimes less dramatic. Our study gives us insight into the ways people draw upon language to give meaning and make sense of something that's challenging. While our study focuses on missionaries, we're tapping into a universal process."
With Alice Fanari from the University of Oklahoma, Cooper interviewed 26 missionaries who spent as long as three and a half years proselytizing, teaching, or serving in locales around United States and internationally including Africa, the Philippines, Russia, and Brazil.
Most of the missionaries were affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, while others were nondenominational Christians or Catholic. Most also were single, white females in their 20s.
Their study, "Extending communicated sense-making theorizing to social groups: missionaries' use of metaphor, personification, and in-group vernacular," was published late last year in the journal Human Communication Research.
"As communications researchers, sometimes we listen to what people tell us and other times we look at how they talk," Cooper says. "In this study, we paid attention to how they were talking about this experience and what they were doing in their language that reflects different ways of making sense of their experience."
It's the second phase of the pair's look at the missionary experience, with the first centered on the cultural aspect of returning home, Fanari says.
"Often nobody tells you that going home can sometimes feel very different," she explains. "Like anyone who returns from an experience, missionaries have changed during their time away. They've adjusted to the cultural location. They've integrated some of the cultural values of where they were, and they now have to renavigate and readjust to being home and explain to people what the experience was like for them."
And that can be difficult, they say, in the same way a military veteran, Peace Corps volunteer, diplomat, or even Fulbright scholar would have an adjustment period after being away for a prolonged period.
Wrestling Match: Old Self vs. New Self
Missionaries - along with many others who are away from home in a service capacity - often take on a different role while they're abroad, Cooper says, almost assuming a new identity in the performance of their work.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for instance, women trade their first names for "Sister" and men for "Elder" in addition to their last names.
"And when they come home, they shed that identity and are supposed to integrate back into whoever they were before," Cooper says. "The missionaries we talked to described a wrestling match between the 'old self' and the 'new self.'
"That role piece can make the transition more difficult," she continues, "because they have to make sense of the person they were when they were away and the person they are when they're home. Some people we spoke to used language like, 'I'm trying to meld these two disparate people back into one.'"
Cooper says she and Fanari expected the missionaries would concoct on-the-spot metaphors to describe various things they were trying to convey, but what was interesting, and somewhat unexpected, was that they used Bible verses and biblical characters or events in the process. Words like "disciple" and phrases like "called to serve" were routinely used in interviews.
And the metaphors were vivid, oftentimes extending into full-blown narratives and not just quickly dropped idioms, Fanari adds, "There was some thoughtfulness and a rich understanding of what the metaphor meant for them."
One example, Cooper says, came in a conversation about returning home and how dark it felt because of the uncertainty of the future after having been hyper focused on the mission itself. The missionary compared that time to Good Friday when Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross and the time of darkness that followed when he was entombed.
"But she knew the light would be coming. At the end, there's a resurrection," Cooper says. "She wove this biblical story and this biblical metaphor into her own experience - and just did it so naturally. It wasn't something she had to think about. The missionaries just drew from the language and stories that were embedded in their religious groups to then give voice to their own experiences."
'Hey, you're back, time to readjust'
Using group vernacular - like listening to a military veteran talk in acronyms or address another as sir or ma'am - isn't unusual, Cooper says. What was unusual was the way the missionaries used their group vernacular to express something that was otherwise hard to put into words.
While she listened, Cooper says, she found herself nodding along, recalling the familiar unease she experienced following her two years as a missionary with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"I was terrified to go home," Cooper says. "For many years in my youth, I focused on wanting to serve as a missionary, so I had my plan only up through there. I remember coming up to the end of my missionary service and thinking the future is black. I have nothing planned.
"For most missionaries while they're serving, they put on blinders and zoom in on whatever their service is - if I'm going to teach kids in Germany, I'm teaching kids in Germany. This is all that I'm doing. For many missionaries, their whole identity turns into being a missionary," she adds.
She describes her life back then as like a puzzle, trying to fit together the pieces that had fallen apart or altered shape as she, and those back home, changed during those months away.
An immediate family vacation helped, along with assistance finding a job, both the forethought of her parents. But other things took time to get used to, even remembering that now she had to pay for things on her own; the church no longer foot the bill and things weren't given gratis.
"The degree to which the people around us can share the intercultural experiences and stories depends so much upon the degree to which the person is able to communicate those stories to the people at home," Fanari says. "Unfortunately, those stories are often not told, and returners feel a little silenced. The pressure to reintegrate has such a clear expiration date, 'Hey, you're back, time to readjust and get back to life.'"
Cooper says that creating a place for missionaries to share their stories with those around them would be helpful, along with warning them they may feel adrift when they return and that most others feel the same.
They also need to be reassured, Fanari says, that their experiences will always be part of who they are even though they're not doing the same kind of work anymore, and that it's OK to take up a new identity of student or employee, and remember that when they leave church on Sundays they're a missionary in the community.
"Our study pulls back the curtain on what it looks like for people to come home and provides some guidance on where some of the pain points might be," Cooper says. "We know that people who are returning from Christian missionary service often have uncertainties, so maybe one thing those sending organizations or the family they're returning to can do is help them establish a plan or do some of these things to reduce their challenges upon reentry."
