Abstract
This paper focuses on areas of overlap between linguistic and rhetorical analyses of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. The question is raised whether and to what extent conclusions drawn from a text immanent linguistic approach, on the one hand, and those drawn from rhetorical analyses, on the other, are compatible and mutually supportive. Using Galatians as sample text, the author compares three different approaches: analysis presupposing a rhetorical scheme (as proposed by Hans Dieter Betz), the reconstruction of a rhetorical strategy from the text itself (as advocated by Francois Tolmie), and the so-called semantic (though ultimately syntactic) discourse analysis of Galatians published by a group of South African New Testament scholars. By means of this comparison, the author illustrates the value of a syntactically based method of discourse analysis for verifying conclusions regarding rhetorical strategies.
Highlights
Almost simultaneous with the publication of Hans Dieter Betz’s well-known commentary on Galatians, in which he analysed the letter according to categories pertaining to Greco-Roman rhetoric, J.P
The aim of the present paper is to introduce discourse analysis into the current debate which centres on the rhetorical analysis of Galatians
I hope to demonstrate that the findings of rhetorical analysis are largely corroborated by the results of discourse analysis, and that the two methods are mutually supportive rather than contradictory
Summary
Almost simultaneous with the publication of Hans Dieter Betz’s well-known commentary on Galatians, in which he analysed the letter according to categories pertaining to Greco-Roman rhetoric, J.P. In the context of the present debate, it may be observed that Tolmie’s rhetorical analysis displays a to-and-fro movement between the whole and its constituent parts — but note that the letter as a whole is approached with the assumption that Paul wrote it trying to persuade the Galatians to accept his point of view. This assumption characterises the analysis as rhetorical. It seems that a strictly rhetorical analysis of a discourse like Galatians may run the risk of disregarding the occurrence and significance of other textual strategies, such as narrative and phatic strategies (‘phatic’ referring to those textual elements that have no other communicative function than to establish and sustain the communicative event itself)
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