The present study looks at language use in the worship of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), especially that of two Indiana Monthly Meetings, one programmed and one unprogrammed, located within thirty miles of one another. This study discusses the juncture of language and religion studies, or theolinguistics. The study looks at the Meeting for Worship comprehensively in both settings as a performative event, i.e. at what constitutes error as well as good performance, and the written and unwritten rules for participation therein.A comparative ethnography was done on the two Monthly Meetings. A questionnaire was distributed in both Monthly Meeting populations and the results compiled. Meetings for Worship were taped and transcribed at both sites, and the frequency of Quaker Plain Speech items counted. Monoconc keyword searches of important texts for each branch of Quakerism were done and compared. A glossary of these terms was compiled and Friends' speechways analyzed.Many commonalities emerged in the underlying structure of the Meeting for Worship as an event at both sites, but a divergence in belief influences the religious language items and style used at each site. A model for this divergence, the QPS Continuum, containing the six traditions of Quakerism was constructed, describing the variations as a matter of degree rather than completely separate types. / Department of English