Abstract
This study draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitive Theory to explore genre blending in Amos 5. It demonstrates that Amos 5 is both a plausibly cohesive and coherent text, and that the text is made up of sub-sections of identifiably distinct genres of prophetic literature.
Highlights
Amos 5 is a prophetic text that contains within it several identifiable pieces, which have in the past been understood as distinct underlying genres with their own Sitz im Leben
Amos 5 as an example of prophecy that blends various genres into a single cohesive and rhetorically effective text. To explain this state of affairs I will draw upon theory from two schools of linguistic thought: Systemic Functional Linguistics, and Cognitive Theory. The former will provide a framework for how sub-ordinate genres relate to the super-ordinate genre of a given text, as well as a definition of linguistic texture, including ways to analyze a text for coherence and cohesion
The most important concepts tied to this branch of socio-linguistics are that language is a system of interrelated components, that language is system of realization moving from the broad social sign-system to the semantic system to the lexical and grammatical system to the phonological system, and that language is a functional system of signs, used to mean and do things
Summary
Amos 5 is a prophetic text that contains within it several identifiable pieces, which have in the past been understood as distinct underlying genres with their own Sitz im Leben. 1 In this paper, I will explore. To that end this paper explores Amos 5 both as a potentially coherent and cohesive text, and as a text built using various identifiable types/genres of prophecy By using this specific sub-division of Amos (i.e., the entirety of chapter 5), I am complicating my account by including passages not traditionally considered as part of the unit of 5:1–17. The most important concepts tied to this branch of socio-linguistics are that language is a system of interrelated components, that language is system of realization moving from the broad social sign-system to the semantic system to the lexical and grammatical system to the phonological system, and that language is a functional system of signs, used to mean and do things Though such a socio-semiotic approach is by no means the only available here, when the social element of language is of particular interest, as it is in religious literature, these types of analysis can be helpful (Halliday and Hasan, Language, 4–5). Ehud Ben Zvi (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 15–31, here 24–25
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