Fantasy novel read in the 80s or early 90s. Protagonists visit a land where people only speak by quoting their holy book

Question

The way language works in this country is explained to the visitors. The person teaching them says that here only children speak language in the ordinary way. Amongst adults, many never speak at all. The rest speak only in quotations from their holy book.

One of the visitors asked how they communicate something practical such as carry that wood over there. He is told that gestures are used, perhaps with the addition of a quotation about the desirability of hard work.

When I first watched the episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, "Darmok", I was reminded of the manner of communication in this book. This does not necessarily mean the novel predates the episode as I may have first seen Darmok as a repeat in the mid 90s.

I have ruled out Jack Vance's 1973 novel, The Asutra.

Answer 1

In Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun from the 1980s the protagonist Severian visits the land of the Ascians

Although Ascian is their mother tongue, adult Ascians do not understand plain Ascian sentences unless they are direct quotations from governmental propaganda materials, referred to as Correct Thought. Thus, in order to communicate, an Ascian has to know by heart thousands of these quotations (sentences) on many different topics.