two models?
Wayne Leman
wayne_leman at sil.org
Thu Oct 24 12:36:41 EDT 2002
Part of the confusion over how valuable discourse analysis might be in the
study of *any* biblical text is the fact that there is more than one DA
tradition, each of which addresses different aspects of language. See URLs:
http://bank.rug.ac.be/da/da.htm
http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/glossd.htm#discourseanalysis
DA, as practiced by SIL members and similar linguists, is essentially an
extension of other structuralist approaches to language. Within this
linguistic model, DA discovers inter-sentential relationships, many of which
are encoded in Greek, for instance, by particles such as GAR, DE, etc. The
results of this kind of DA are often displayed in SSAs (Semantic Structure
Analysis diagrams). Information on structuralist DA can be found in a number
of books by SIL members or others trained at SIL schools. See URLs such as:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_catalog.asp?by=cat&name=Discourse
http://www.ovc.edu/discourse/index.htm
http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/index.htm#discourse
http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/gal/sawyer/gal-01.htm
Another major approach to language study, also called "discourse analysis,"
focuses on conversational analysis, turn-taking in conversation:
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/441795
http://www.hku.hk/linguist/program/discourse.html
Another DA approach studies the relationship between language and society.
Such study would include analysis of advertising, propaganda, preaching,
etc:
http://dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy/Philosophy_of_Language/Pragmatics/Discour
se_Analysis/
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/frame.html?http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/detail
s/j0115.html
The first DA approach can be used on any text, including the smaller books
of the Bible, such as Jude. In fact, one of my SIL colleagues, Harry Harm,
who used to be a member of this list, posted info on this list a number of
years ago about his DA study of the book of Jude. See URL for a b-greek post
from Harry which mentions his early work on word order in Jude:
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/96-12/0977.html
Word order is not part of DA, per se, but Harry later did DA analysis of
Jude:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_work.asp?id=21177
There is value in each of the different DA approaches, but it is important
to be aware that these are different ways of studying language, all of which
are called discourse analysis.
Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
http://committed.to/fieldtesting
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