Fwd: Re: Teaching Top Down Analysis

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon May 1 12:33:20 EDT 2000


I'm assuming that if Wayne agreed my question is of general interest, his
answer to me should also be of general interest. I personally thought it
very helpful and want to be sure it's shared with the list.

>From: "Wayne Leman" <wleman at mcn.net>
>To: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
>Subject: Re: Teaching Top Down Analysis
>Date: Mon, 1 May 2000 09:05:03 -0600
>
>Carl began:
>
>>
>>Perhaps I ought to put this question off-line, but I think it may really be
>>of general interest.
>
>I would think it is, Carl.
>
>As one who started learning Greek half a century ago
>>and who found it awesomely challenging at that time to master the detail of
>>morphology, diction, and syntax (just those simple matters!), I'm wondering
>>just how it is proposed that incorporation of Discourse Analysis should be
>>done at the beginning level.
>
>I suggest it is done by illustrating to students that information is
>communicated in message "chunks", the smallest of which is probably the
>clause. Clauses are linked to each other through interclausal relationships,
>marked in many languages, including Greek with conjunctions and other words
>that encode the intended relationships. Then conceptual units of about the
>size of a literary paragraph are similary connected to each other. Seeing
>the connection between each progressively larger language unit enables the
>Greek student to get closer and closer to the overall ideas the biblical
>author was conveying and how those ideas are connected to each other.
>
>
><snip>
>
>>Classicist, AND as one who grows older becoming increasingly skeptical
>>about most things people make grandiose assertions about, I need yet to be
>>convinced (and I AM ready and willing) of the value and importance of
>>Discourse Analysis; I expect to be reading more of it and about it, but
>>what has impressed me thus far is the seeming subjectivity of it
>
>I think this is more the fault of the presenters than the subject content
>itself. Since we all speak in discourses, not individual words (which make
>little sense uttered by themselves in syntactic and discourse isolation), we
>can study discourse just as objectively as we do morphology, parts of speech
>(pronouns, nouns, participles, etc.), aspect, mode, and syntax.
>
> (I should
>>also add, perhaps, that I am one who is very skeptical of social-science
>>methodologies and claims to be "scientific" in their analysis of human
>>behavior).
>
>Rightly so. Much social science has not been approached as objectively as it
>should, giving rise to the well-deserved label "soft-science".
>
>I continue to feel (although I am willing to be convinced
>>otherwise) that one doesn't get on toward fluency in reading ancient Greek
>>prose very well by any means more succesfully than by reading, reading,
>>reading, oodles of ancient Greek prose.
>
>So true, but we cannot understand the connections between pericopes and
>major themes of a piece of literature until we grasp the discourse
>connections. It may be true, as another subscriber has stated, that this
>"grasp" is done intuitively or innately, but then the same could be said for
>morphology or any other level of language study. Some people seem to be able
>to do much of this intuitively, while others need more deliberate, objective
>pedagogical approaches.
>
>>
>>So I still wonder how it is proposed that "top down analysis" is to be
>>taught to students at the beginning level. Is it something like, "This is
>>John. John is running. See John run."--or what?
>
>I don't think so, since that John, Sally, run, dog, cat stuff isn't really
>well-formed discourses. I became literate on those primers but when I became
>a man I put away...  <g>  (I realized that the sentences were made up for
>pedagogical purposes and weren't very natural language.) Discourse analysis
>works with extant texts, the texts which you have been studying all your
>academic life. You have actually been doing discourse analysis as you have
>tried to find the major themes of a text, and the thematic connections
>between the sections of a text.
>
>Discourse analysis helps us answer questions like:
>
>What is the logical relationship between the first 11 "doctrinal" chapters
>of the book of Romans and the remaining "practical" chapters? What is there
>that the author of the book set up in the doctrinal sections that laid a
>foundation for his hortatory material?
>
>I like the introductory textbook "Linguistics & Biblical Interpretation," by
>British linguist Peter Cotterell and N.T. exegete Max Turner (IVP, 1989).
>Their chapter 3, "Dimensions of the Meaning of a Discourse," gives an
>introduction to one approach to discourse which some people find helpful.
>
>Ultimately, discourse analysis enables one to chart the logical and semantic
>relationships among all the clauses of a N.T. book and there is an
>increasing number of publications now which show the result of such
>charting. Most of the work is fairly commonsense, not highly technical. Its
>great value is in helping the Greek student see the forest among all the
>trees, to understand the major arguments of a book, to see how a biblical
>author sets up a logical foundation for a subsequent hortatory section, etc.
>Discourse analysis moves one from subjective "interpretation" of the text
>toward greater objectivity in discovering the original authors meanings, not
>only at the levels of morphology, lexical, and clause where Greek studies
>have traditionally been strong, but at the levels of the connections about
>propositions, ideas.
>
>We need both in Greek studies, the trees (which are foundational) and the
>forest, the latter which enables us to better understand the flow of logic
>which the author used. Discourse analysis is nothing new. Greek rhetoric is
>2500 or so years old. We just need to be sure not to leave out the insights
>gained from such rhetorical approaches to the language, as we study any
>language, but esp. classical languages where sometimes we have concentrated
>so much on the trees that we have forgotten to look at the forest, leaving
>the forest to theologian, exegetes, and commentators, who often, it seems to
>me, often draw more upon their systematic theologies to try to figure out
>the overall meaning of a passage, instead of using the more objective
>methods available to analyze the rhetorical devices which are in the text,
>just as amenable to study as are cases, prepositions, moods, verb parsing,
>etc.
>
>Wayne
>Bible translation discussion list:
>http://www.egroups.com/group/bible-translation

-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu 



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