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PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 12:53 pm
by Matthew Longhorn
I just stumbled across the PhD thesis of Michael Allan Rudolph and have marked it for holiday reading starting next weekend.
Two questions:
1. Beyond identifying that the author has a phd and therefore presumably the work was considered good enough, I am guessing that not all phd theses are of the same quality. Is there any way to identify whether a thesis was marked out for being above average or any other indicator of quality?
2. Is there some way online of checking what works have interacted with this thesis, either reviewing, critiquing or otherwise? I can Google as well as anyone else, but if there is some sort of reference page I can get to that would help. You can tell I am not a uni grad, beyond reading this stuff I still have no idea how the world of academia works so sorry if it is a daft question

https://www.academia.edu/6897897/Reclai ... gh_Hebrews

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 1:35 pm
by Matthew Longhorn
I just found Casson’s thesis on the same word.
https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/ ... thesis.pdf

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 2:42 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
A PhD thesis/dissertation may generate massive levels of interaction over several decades and still be of questionable value.

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 2:50 pm
by Matthew Longhorn
My desire to see the possible interaction it has generated wasn’t meant as a qualitative measure of worth - more something I could use to look up what others are saying and hopefully get correctives

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 3:00 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
Matthew Longhorn wrote: May 26th, 2019, 2:50 pm My desire to see the possible interaction it has generated wasn’t meant as a qualitative measure of worth - more something I could use to look up what others are saying and hopefully get correctives
Yes, I understood your question that way. What I am saying is reading the responses may not protect you from getting drawn into a discussion that has no merit. There are "big waves" that break on the shores of academia that turn out in the end to be nothing worth wasting your time on. Social science is a continuous history of big waves. Linguistics is a branch of social science.

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 3:16 pm
by Daniel Semler
Hi Matthew,

The first PhD thesis you linked to has some interesting stuff in it it seems to me. If it seems so to you then read it. It is only 5 years old and perhaps a good deal of what it covers is covered elsewhere and perhaps it's just too new. I usually find thesis and papers as references in other works, or because I'm looking for something and the paper comes up as a hit. I then have to read or at least skim it to figure out whether its time I'll never get back as they say.

The other problem I find with papers in these fields is that I do not have the background. I am a computer programmer by training. So I find a lot of things I have to go chasing up elsewhere. If you are just interested in discourse connectives there a number of books on the topic now that would help orient you in the field before diving into something as detailed as this. If you have the background then ... no worries.

I, of course, do things backward more often than not, so have dived into many lakes too deep for me and had to paddle back to shore like the forlorn half-drowned pup, but oh well, all instructive.

Thx
D

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 3:22 pm
by Matthew Longhorn
Hi Daniel, thanks for the response. I have an active interest in relevance theory which this thesis uses, as does Casson’s, so I will definitely be reading both. I have read Margaret Sims’ book on ἵνα and ὅτι from a relevance theory perspective as well - no background in this though so trying to be cautious with whatever I am reading at the same time.

The problem with isolated study is that you don’t have the corrective of people around you challenging acceptance of poor arguments. The only way I can think to counter that is to try to find out if there has been much push back against a theory or view and read those where I can.

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 3:42 pm
by Daniel Semler
I've not read on relevance theory which is part of what piqued my interest in Rudolph's thesis.

Working on your own, as I also do, means you have to do more grunt work for yourself and sure there are blind alleys. That said, you don't suffer other peoples' blinkers, so pick your poison as they say. I think at this point I've mixed enough metaphors.

You just have to feel your way. I did a quick search and could see no refs on the web. I don't have Academia.edu pro version so I couldn't use their advance search to see if it's cited - I assume advanced search would afford you that. I see he received some guidance from David Allan Black, several books of whom I've read and liked.

Good luck
D

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 4:53 pm
by James Spinti
Casson's dissertation has been revised and is forthcoming from SBL Press:
https://secure.aidcvt.com/sbl/ProdDetai ... BL&PCS=SBL

HTH,
James

Re: PhD thesis - Rudolph - Reclaiming γαρ

Posted: May 26th, 2019, 7:32 pm
by Robert Emil Berge
The best place to check if an academic work is cited is https://scholar.google.com

If you search for "Reclaiming Γάρ" there, you'll get two hits, the thesis from 2014 and a book chapter by the same author from 2017. None of them have any citations (although the book chapter should have cited the thesis, I assume). I guess the book chapter is a shorter, more readable and more developed version of the thesis, but I haven't looked at any of them.

Here's a link to the google books page for the book, pointing to the chapter:

https://books.google.no/books?hl=no&lr= ... 22&f=false