David I. Yoon, «Prominence and Markedness in New Testament Discourse.», Vol. 26 (2013) 3-26
Paul's testimony of his post-conversion experience in Galatians—the only place in the New Testament this is found—is the starting point for the rest of his polemic against his opponents who avert the gospel he first taught his readers. What is interesting is that he highlights or emphasizes certain portions of his testimony, using the linguistic method of prominence. As others have written already, prominence in Hellenistic Greek is conveyed in many ways, but one major way is by the writer's choice of verbal aspect. By first identifying a theory of prominence in the Greek of the New Testament, the paper then applies that theory to Gal 1:11–2:10 to discover that Paul emphasizes preaching and gospel related items in his testimony.
Prominence and Markedness in New Testament Discourse 5
three criteria to a selected passage, Gal 1,11–2,10, Paul’s post-conversion
testimony, to determine what the writer intends to emphasize, or make
prominent, in this discourse. Thus, identifying prominence is helpful for
determining meaning, because the prominent elements of the discourse
are what the writer intends to emphasize over other parts of the discourse.
2. A Basic Theory of Prominence in Hellenistic Greek
While discourse analysis itself is a multi-variegated methodology
with differences between its various analysts, one major commonality
is its insistence on analyzing text above the sentence level3. There are
various ways of “doing” discourse analysis, as well as various features to
analyze, but I want to identify one particular feature for determining the
various emphases in the text. This is generally called prominence. In this
section, I will outline a working definition of prominence, supply three
main criteria for determining prominence in Greek, and then identify
the various levels of prominence in consideration of the criteria provided.
A. Defining Prominence
The term prominence, and the related term markedness, are crucial
items of discussion, especially in identifying their precise relationship to
each other and what they mean4. The confusion between these words still
exists even in secular linguistic studies, and some have even proposed
extinguishing one or the other term5. However, due to the limitations of
this paper, I propose the following definitions: I define markedness as
a linguistic description of binary oppositions based on formal features
of the text, which may or may not be used to signify prominence, while
3
Cf. Michael Stubbs, Discourse Analysis: The Sociolinguistic Analysis of Natural
Language (LS; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) 1; Stephen H. Levinsohn,
Discourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook on the Information Structure
of New Testament Greek (2nd ed. Dallas: SIL International, 2000) viii; Zellig S. Harris,
“Discourse Analysis,” Language 28 (1952) 1–30, esp. 1; Brian Paltridge, Discourse Analysis:
An Introduction (2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2012) 2; Deborah Schiffrin, Approaches to
Discourse (BTL; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994) 24.
4
Some other terms that are included in this discussion include salience, foregrounding,
and emphasis. Cf. Stanley E. Porter, “Prominence: A Theoretical Overview,” in Stanley
E. Porter and Matthew Brook O’Donnell (eds.), The Linguist as Pedagogue: Trends in the
Teaching and Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament (NTM 11; Sheffield: 2009)
47; Jeffrey T. Reed, A Discourse Analysis of Philippians: Method and Rhetoric in the
Debate over Literary Integrity (JSNTSup 136; Sheffield: 1997) 105.
5
Cf. e.g., Martin Haspelmath, “Against Markedness: And What to Replace it With”, JL
42 (2006) 25–70.
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