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 Ling 131: Language & Style		  
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 Topic 9 (session A) - Speech Presentation > More extended analyses > Task B
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What happens when speech is presented
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Speech presentation scale

More extended analyses

Task B - For God's sake stop rewriting our Bible

The following extract is from a newspaper article about the publication in the United States, of a politically correct Bible by Oxford University Press.

Using your Speech Presentation checksheet, for each sentence, or part of a sentence, note down the mode of speech presentation you think is used. The speech presentation modes you are looking for are DS, FIS, IS, NRSA and NV. (Note that you may find more than one category in some sentences.) Some sentences do not involve speech presentation at all, and you may find it helpful to label these with 'N' for Narration.

You can compare your analyses with ours using the button at the end of the passage.

For God's sake stop rewriting our Bible
ANGRY churchmen have condemned a politically-correct Bible which has rewritten the scriptures to avoid giving offence. It attempts to do away with alleged sexism, racism and even bias against left-handed people. Traditionalists have accused the authors of heresy and claim they are making a mockery of the Bible message.
'We are not at liberty to change the word of God just to be politically correct,' said the Rev. Tony Higton. 'If you are going to tear some pages out of the Bible and rewrite others where will it finish?
'You end up with something that would ultimately be a different religion.'

(Daily Express, 5/12/1994)

our answers

Now note down why you think the author has made the choices he or she has decided upon - i.e. assess what effect(s) those choices have on you, the reader (e.g. in terms of manipulating your sympathies). Then compare your thoughts with ours.

Our commentary:

The DS of the headline, without any reporting clause to identify the speaker(s) is tactically useful for the writer of this article because of the ambiguity it creates. The reader of the article could understand the words as belonging to (i) the unhappy clergymen quoted in the article, (ii) the reporter himself, who, given the right-wing the newspaper he is writing for, is likely to agree with the upset clergymen, (iii) the views of the readers themselves (who the reporter can also be seen as representing) or (iv) an amalgam of two or more of the above. This ambiguity is clearly strategically very useful for the writer in persuasive terms. The DS form is also very helpful to the writer in bringing a vivid, eye-catching quality to the headline.

In the main body of the article, what we see is an interesting modulation of speech presentation forms. The article begins with NRSA, the summarising form, outlining the general unhappiness of the traditionalists, pulls the reader a bit closer to that viewpoint with the use of Indirect Speech and then finally quotes a named clergyman in the DS form. Hence the NRSA and IS forms act as an introduction to the DS forms. For those predisposed to have similar views to those the writer is propounding, the authority of the words of the clergymen strengthen the views indicated in the less direct, summarising forms at the beginning of the text.

 

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