Talk of Prayer: How Shared Expectations Organize Cultural Tool Use

Cultural tools are socially acquired skills, styles, and habits individuals use to navigate their lives. Since cultural tools are mastered through practice, individuals tend to be more adept with some tools than others. Social groups have normative frames, or shared expectations, specifying how cultural tools should be used. To become adept with a cultural tool, individuals must comply with the normative frames governing its use. In this paper, I document the shared expectations organizing prayer at a Pentecostal church in Orange County, California. Drawing on data collected through participant observation, I find that congregants expected supplicants to speak to God in an intimate yet reverent tone, develop a dedicated prayer practice, and remain highly observant while waiting for God to answer their prayers. These findings suggest that social groups do not use a single normative frame to organize the use of particular cultural tools across all situations, as previous research claims, but instead organize the use of specific cultural tools with a collection of shared expectations, each addressing a different aspect of performance. Future research should continue investigating the multiple shared expectations various social groups develop to govern the use of the same cultural tools.