A Discourse Analysis of Philippians: Method and Rhetoric in the Debate over Literary Integrity
Overview
In Part 1 of Reed’s Discourse Analysis of Philippians he supplies an introduction to discourse analysis and includes a sketch of its history before presenting a model of its use in analyzing the New Testament. He explains how discourse analysis can be used in systemic-functional linguistics and in the study of presuppositions and functional grammar in the New Testament. In Part 2, Reed carefully details the literary integrity, structure, and texture of Philippians while providing the reader with an introduction to ancient letter writing and epistolary theory. His voluminous citations of papyrus examples help illustrate his points, and two appendices offer more important information for understanding Paul’s letter to the believers in Philippi.
Top Highlights
“The term discourse analysis, which is used in somewhat different ways by various modern linguists, at its broadest level refers to the study and interpretation of both the spoken and written communication of humans.” (Page 17)
“What is the speaker/author trying to ‘mean’ (i.e. what is the speaker/author ‘on about’)? How does the listener/reader respond to the message? How do humans generally acquire, store, use and process information in communicative events? What type of social factors influence the communication between the speaker/author and listener/reader? Conversely, how does language shape the way people communicate and interpret discourse? What is it that makes a text coherent? How do the bits and pieces seemingly fit together into a cohesive and coherent whole?” (Page 32)
“Pragmatics is concerned with the principles used by people to draw inferences from given utterances and their contexts in order to interpret those utterances.” (Page 39)
“It is thus interested in how ‘form’ relates to ‘function’ and how ‘function’ relates to ‘situation’.” (Page 37)
“relations: (i) sequential‚ where different texts or registers” (Page 56)
- Title: A Discourse Analysis of Philippians: Method and Rhetoric in the Debate over Literary Integrity
- Author: Jeffrey T. Reed
- Publisher: Sheffield Academic Press
- Publication Date: 1997
- Pages: 505
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