I have really enjoyed the summer break from blogging and most things academic. My present task-list at Logos has mainly involved writing, which has taken up much of my creative energies in recent months. Most of the rest of my year is now planned out and organized, so it’s time to get back into the swing of blogging and preparing for fall conferences. For the first time since 2005 I will not be presenting a paper at SBL. I had submitted two proposals; one was not accepted, the other was withdrawn when a heath issue arose in the family, which has now passed.

My proposal accepted for ETS is a critique of Porter’s theoretical model of prominence as applied to verbal aspect, and call to move in a new, more productive direction in this area of research. I am not given to critiques other than as part of the literature survey, but it seemed prudent in this case, particularly since Porter has now applied his same notion of prominence to new areas.1

My posts on this topic have been broken into two aspects of his model: markedness and grounding. I had planned on covering one at each conference, but my SBL proposal was not accepted. My ETS presentation, held in the first session on the first day, will summarize my findings regarding the methodological flaws in Porter’s approach. Understanding the flaws is key to understanding why a new direction is needed to make substantive progress. I will finish the last few posts in the coming weeks.

Most of my work days in September will be devoted to completing the High Definition Commentary volume on Philippians. The concept is to walk the reader through a synthesis of my analysis of the discourse without requiring them to learn all of the technicalities of discourse grammar. It is geared for pastors and lay leaders who lack the background to process a technical treatment of the Greek, but who want to be faithful to the flow and texture of the message. I have teamed up with Shiloh Hubbard, a very gifted graphic artist whose specialty is infographics, to create teaching slides that make complex matters more understandable. Most of these focus on illustrating the effects or task accomplished by the devices I describe in the discourse grammar. I have been surprised at how much more is demanded of my analysis to provide a simplified overview than would have been required by a more technical treatment. The nagging question that continuously haunts me is “So what?” While it may be nifty to me that some fancy rhetorical device is used, what difference does it make to Paul’s message? What effect does it bring about? Why would he want to phrase it this way, based on the other exegetical indicators from the context? Hmmm. Not a question that finds its way into scholarship as much as perhaps it should. The mandate to be practical and understandable has raised the bar on my scholarship, requiring a deeper level of insight into the passage than needed by the analysis of the Greek text.

What’s the biggest stumbling block? Synthesis, moving from discretely identifying the individual features to a holistic description of the composite message. It reminds me of Mark Twain’s quip apologizing for writing a long letter because he didn’t have the time to write a short one. Shorter and simpler is harder, at least for me. This project will serve as cliff notes for a more technical treatment somewhere down the road.

One of my big epiphanies this summer was a more practical understanding of γάρ and its function in discourse. This is particularly the case in long chains of such clauses, as in Romans 1. It was one thing to write a description in the discourse grammar, and something else to answer the “So what” question.

Ain’t grammar grand?

  1. See Stanley E. Porter, “Prominence: An Overview,” in The Linguist as Pedagogue, edited by Stanley E Porter and Matthew Brook O’Donnell, 45-74. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd, 2009. [↩]