Which Discourse Features Do You Use? When Do You Use It?

Nick Steffen
Nick Steffen Member Posts: 673 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

Do you find that there are particular discourse features functioning in Greek that don't translate well into English? In that case, I'm wondering if it would make sense to leave those particular discourse features enabled constantly to make sure that they are not missed as opposed to treating them as a specialty tool to be enabled as needed. 

Which features have you found particularly helpful in your work/study?

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  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 13,816 ✭✭✭

    Where's George, when we need him?

    At best, discource features are a proposition ... maybe significant, maybe not. Especially when the original recipients were largely 2nd-language (eg Pentecost). Opening full-time is good for learning, but soon a crutch. Better, similar to a commentary ... specific issues.

    "If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,851

    Which features have you found particularly helpful in your work/study?

    I am firmly of the school that the various parsings of linguistics, at any level, are tools to be used in the initial stages of learning a language and tools to be used by doing the parsing yourself throughout your career. This goes along with a belief that if you can't do it yourself, you don't understand what you are looking at when someone does it for you. That said, all the supplied parsings (filter or commentary) are useful to view when trying to understand the differences of opinion on the meaning of the text. Then again, I should admit that I love to focus on the ambiguities of the text - more to chew on than when there a single, clear meaning.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Nick Steffen
    Nick Steffen Member Posts: 673 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    That said, all the supplied parsings (filter or commentary) are useful to view when trying to understand the differences of opinion on the meaning of the text.

    Agreed, MJ. I do like bringing more attention/resources to areas that seem ambiguous or could cause confusion and less to areas that seem clear. But to be honest, I'm very new to the discourse analysis tools and vocabulary and am still learning how they can help us to read better. 

  • Nick Steffen
    Nick Steffen Member Posts: 673 ✭✭✭

    Denise said:

    At best, discource features are a proposition ... maybe significant, maybe not. Especially when the original recipients were largely 2nd-language (eg Pentecost). Opening full-time is good for learning, but soon a crutch. Better, similar to a commentary ... specific issues.

    Good point, I appreciate that, Denise. 

  • Lee
    Lee Member Posts: 2,714

    In that case, I'm wondering if it would make sense to leave those particular discourse features enabled constantly

    What did you mean by that?

  • Nick Steffen
    Nick Steffen Member Posts: 673 ✭✭✭

    Lee said:

    What did you mean by that?

    My thinking was that if a particular discourse feature was generally not being communicated in translation, then perhaps users would be better served by constantly leaving that particular visual filter on in general rather than turning discourse features on and off in order to study particular linguistic facets. 

  • Lee
    Lee Member Posts: 2,714

    No idea how that would be expressed as a visual filter, let alone how that would help regular users.

  • Nick Steffen
    Nick Steffen Member Posts: 673 ✭✭✭

    You could go into the discourse list and simply click one of the particular filters rather than the entire group of filters. Or, if you'd like to customize it further, there's a discourse analysis visual filter on the Logos Visual Filters group that would offer something of a template for how it could be expressed otherwise. As to how it would help regular users, I would see it doing what many of (in my mind) the best Logos features do best, relatively unobtrusively drawing attention to a path the user may not think of taking otherwise and providing a powerful tool to explore it.

    That being said, as I mentioned to MJ above, I am still learning to the basics of discourse analysis (reading the grammar, the documentation, learning the mechanics of the tools, etc), but am still trying to understand when to use it and when not to.