Discourse Analysis

William Stern

Hello, I have a question:

In seminary, I learned discourse analysis from Dr. Greg Beale and others. I now use the method nearly every week for sermon preparation. Before purchasing Logos, I used a web application called Biblearc that allowed me to do discourse analysis easily. When I switched to Logos, however, I was surprised that nothing like Biblearc was available. Therefore, in a given week of sermon prep, I generally switch over to Biblearc to do discourse analysis before switching back to Logos for further study. I would love to do discourse analysis in Logos with all of my other resources. Is Logos/Faithlife considering this in the future?

Blessings,
Will

Pastor Loren

@William Stern . Thanks for the suggestion. In the meantime, Logos offers two tools that may help:
https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017978492-Sentence-Diagram
https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018175571-Canvas

Douglas Anger

The arcing and bracketing features of Biblearc are indispensable to me.

Chris Taylor

I'm using Notability for my bracketing. This would be an awesome feature.

Mal Walker

Like Will, I was surprised that nothing quite Biblearc is made available in logos.

My particular desire is to be able to easily diagram and label the relationship between clauses. Sentence diagramming (what logos calls line diagramming) is more helpful to understand the relationships between words within the clause, but flow diagramming (text flow diagramming) is best for understanding the relationship between the various clauses, which is what I want to do 90% of the time.

I can sort of do this in a limited sense with the current sentence diagramming tool, but it lacks the ability to clearly and easily categorize the various types of clauses.

The best resource that I have seen that unpacks this method of flow diagramming is Andrew Naselli's 'How to Understand and Apply the New Testament: Twelve Steps from Exegesis to Theology.' Chapter 5 'Argument Diagram' covers pretty much everything, and I would love to see the ability to perform this level of diagramming within logos. - https://www.logos.com/product/137297/how-to-understand-and-apply-the-new-testament-twelve-steps-from-exegesis-to-theology

Additionally, the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series (example below is taken from Galatians - https://www.logos.com/product/26718/galatians) is the only current one that I am aware of that in addition to providing a translation of the text before commentating on it also traces the flow of the argument. It's great. And it's what I want to be able to do within logos. Currently my main options are to either export the text from logos into MS Word or Onenote and do the work there, or use Biblearc as others have already mentioned.

Recent forum posts discuss this further - https://community.logos.com/forums/t/213778.aspx