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Van Noppen has written a book in a fertile but largely neglected field, the analysis of discourse of religion, where words are like running water, essential but impossible to hold tightly. A better understanding of the relationships of words and their contexts, of words and their meanings, is proposed as key to understanding religions. 'Words', when used to mean 'communication', include all aspects of their being: the whole of the utterance in which they are found, their vehicle, as well as the year they are used, the nature of the utterer, the nature of the receiver, and other matters beside. Words are the centre of the message, but only a part of it. Discourse analysis attempts to unpack the whole message.Van Noppen's study includes some of the most commonly investigated of discourse dimensions: the medium, setting, form and content. The media for early Methodism were sermons, hymns, tracts, magazines and journals. Settings for the messages included itinerant preaching, societies, and Sunday Schools. Most direct and most important were the form of the discourse, the words and their meanings as they were used, the choices of key words, the length and complexity of sentence structure, the metaphors and images. The section on 'Semantics' deals with words and phrases the meanings of which are extended or restricted in the discourse of the early Methodists. An important question addressed by the study relates to the influence of Methodist teachings during the beginning of the industrial age in Europe. John Wesley has been attacked, on the grounds that the work ethic which is a key part of early Methodism played into the hands of industrialists during the beginning of the industrial age in Europe. He has been called a tool of the oppressors of the working class. In response, van Noppen goes directly to the words of the Methodist leaders, George Whiteside and Jabez Bunting, and particularly to those of John Wesley. He reviews material in detail and quotes from them liberally: sermons, Sunday school materials, hymns (which are surprisingly precise in their teachings), even Wesley's diaries and letters, which were not intended for public eyes. Van Noppen finds a sincere search for truth and exposition of that truth as Wesley saw it. He finds persuasion, but no evidence of an attempt at manipulation. He finds the Methodist message clear and consistent. It was that all people are from birth sinful but redeemable. The words are addressed principally to the poor and underprivileged, aiming to transform the unclean to be clean, the sinful to be virtuous. Positively, van Noppen sees this as a factor in raising the self-esteem and worth of the lower classes.Wesley said 'reason must remain subordinate to the authority of the word' (van Noppen, p. 139). His recognition of the importance of words is clear in his instructions to other speakers, when he tells them what to say and how to say it. He varied his own sermons in accordance with his audiences, whether the unlettered or the academics at Oxford. His style of discourse might...
Reviewed by MERVIN BARNES Manfred Bierwisch almost single-handedly introduced transformational grammar to Germany, and it was Bierwisch more than anyone else who established the now well-consolidated relationship between linguists in the United States and in Germany. One might well ask whether the level oflinguistics in Germany would be as high as it is today without the work of Manfred Bierwisch during the decade of the sixties. It was inevitable that a festschrift would eventually be dedicated to him. Crossing the boundaries in linguistics is a collection of essays dedicated to Manfred Bierwisch in honor of his fiftieth birthday. Bierwisch wrote on a variety of topics in various subdisciplines oflinguistics and, consistent with his practice, the essays in this book cover a variety of linguistic topics. It would be impossible to discuss the individual articles in any depth, so I will briefly describe the topics covered in the book and then make a general comment on the book as a whole. I would divide the articles into two groups: the 'philosophical' articles, which approach the linguistic problems primarily from the point of view of philosophy and semantics, and the 'other' articles, which include essays on phonology (Morris Halle and Jean Roger Vergnaud, "Harmony processes"), literature and linguistics (Haj Ross, "Robert Frost's 'Out, out-'"), child language (Eve Clark, "Negative verbs in children's speech"), and psycholinguistics (Helmut Schnelle, "Seman
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