Cognitive Linguistic Explorations in Biblical Studies

Bonnie Howe, Joel B. Green, Bonnie Howe, Joel B. Green

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9783110384154
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Writing, reading, and interpretation are acts of human minds, requiring complex cognition at every point. A relatively new field of studies, cognitive linguistics, focuses on how language and cognition are interconnected: Linguistic structures both shape cognitive patterns and are shaped by them. The Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation section of the Society of Biblical Literature gathers scholars interested in applying cognitive linguistics to biblical studies, focusing on how language makes meaning, how texts evoke authority, and how contemporary readers interact with ancient texts. This collection of essays represents first fruits from the first six years (2006–2012) of that effort, drawing on cognitive metaphor study, mental spaces and conceptual blending, narrative theory, and cognitive grammar. Contributors include Eve Sweetser, Ellen van Wolde, Hugo Lundhaug and Jesper T. Nielsen.

Robert H. von Thaden Jr.

Pauline Rhetorical Invention

Seeing 1 Corinthians 6:12—7:7 through Conceptual Integration Theory

A Cognitive Turn

In an article from 1998, Todd Oakley performs an extended analysis of a passage from Art Spiegelman’s Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, in which he combines the use of conceptual integration theory with narratology and argumentation theory. He argues for such a blended approach by contending, “Such a study produces a new kind of analysis that is much stronger than each separately.” ²⁰² Following Oakley’s lead, I also combine multiple analytical tools for investigating “how language prompts for meaning.”²⁰³ The present study marshals some of the resources of conceptual integration theory (also known as blending theory) and uses them within a socio-rhetorical framework to explore 1 Cor 6:12-7: 7 as a unified argument of Paul’s own making. Since this pericope is widely regarded as one of the more problematic Pauline passages, it seems a perfect candidate to use as a test case for investigating the promises of a newer interpretive analytic.²⁰⁴

Conceptual integration theory, the use of which is relatively new in the field of biblical studies, is defined by Seana Coulson and Todd Oakley as a “theoretical framework for exploring human information integration” that makes use of mental space theory.²⁰⁵ Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, the primary theorists of conceptual integration, describe mental spaces as “small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk for the purposes of local understanding and action” that “can be used generally to model dynamic mappings in thought and language.”²⁰⁶ This model is referred to as a conceptual integration network and it allows Fauconnier and Turner to explain how the processes of conceptual blending operate.²⁰⁷

A conceptual integration network has, at minimum, four mental spaces: two input spaces, a generic space, and the blended space (or, the blend). The blend, through a process known as selective projection, contains only selected elements, roles, values, and structures from each input space. Because of this selective projection, the blend prompts new emergent structure throughout the network. This emergent structure is located neither in the input spaces, nor the blended space, but in the dynamic system of the network taken as a whole.²⁰⁸ It is through this emergent structure that creative cognitive and rhetorical work gets accomplished in the blend – work that often helps to sustain reasoning as any given discourse unfolds.²⁰⁹

The process of blending additionally involves several governing principles. One main principle, and the one my exegesis relies heavily upon, involves the compression of vital relations.²¹⁰ Vital relations are what link various elements and structures between mental spaces and compression involves tightening these essential relationships.²¹¹ The notion of compression has evolved over the years and now has perhaps the most explanatory power of all the principles when analyzing how the links among mental spaces become conceptually and rhetorically powerful in the creation of novel emergent structure.²¹² There are about twenty vital relations that play an important role in understanding how compression works, but Analogy, Disanalogy, Part-Whole, and Identity will be the most important to the analysis below.²¹³ The vital relation of Identity, in which two elements from different input spaces are compressed into one element in the blend, will play a large role in analyzing the importance of the Christian body for Paul and will further help us to understand how Paul’s conceptual blends function and, thus, how they make rhetorical sense.

Blends, and by extension the networks they are attached to, become rhetorically persuasive when they are easily grasped. Fauconnier argues that “a central feature of integration networks is their ability to compress diffuse conceptual structure into intelligible and manipulable human-scale situations in a blended space.”²¹⁴ The goal of conceptual integration is to achieve this human scale. Fauconnier and Turner note, “The most obvious human-scale situations have direct perception and action in familiar frames that are easily apprehended by human beings.”²¹⁵ Blended spaces often appear simple because they have achieved this human scale and it is this simplicity that allows the blend to work rhetorically by giving power to the entire network. Compressing vital relations to achieve human scale simplifies conceptually complex situations so that “the logical, emotional, and social inferences within the blended space are inescapable; their validity is not in question.”²¹⁶

Achieving human scale in the blend often has rhetorical power because of its ability to activate human emotions in the reasoning process. Edward Slingerland concludes that “the primary purpose of employing a metaphoric blend to achieve human scale is not to help us intellectually apprehend a situa tion, but rather to help us to know how to feel about it.” Slingerland connects the importance of emotion prompted by blends to Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis.²¹⁷ In full, Damasio argues that a somatic marker:

forces attention on the negative outcome to which an action may lead, and functions as an automated alarm signal which says: Beware of danger ahead if you chose the option which leads to this outcome. The signal may lead you to reject, immediately, the negative course of action and thus make you choose among other alternatives. The automated signal protects you against future losses, without further ado, and then allows you to choose from fewer alternatives. There is still room for using a cost/benefit analysis and proper deductive competence, but only after the automated step drastically reduces the number of options.²¹⁸

The immediacy of the visceral reaction prompted by a somatic marker fits well with blending theory’s notion that conceptual integration networks allow for rapid, online reasoning. Moreover, notice that the somatic marker hypothesis does not discount deductive reasoning and other logic mechanisms. Somatic markers do not explain the entirety of human decision making, but they do stack the deck, as it were, and skilled rhetoricians can exploit the persuasive potential of these markers to the fullest.²¹⁹ Thus the reasoning prompted by blends often relies on the power of emotions and achieving human scale is an important element in provoking such emotional reactions. Slingerland highlights this when he writes that “human scale inputs are recruited polemically to inspire somatic-normative reactions in the listeners.”²²⁰ As will be seen below, this is precisely Paul’s rhetorical strategy in 1 Cor 6:12-7:7.

Before moving into the analysis of 1 Cor 6:12-7:7, it is necessary to explain an element of socio-rhetorical interpretation that provides the framework for my use of conceptual blending. As noted above, I am following Todd Oakley’s lead in combining the tools of conceptual integration theory with another interpretive framework. The difficulty in this task, of course, is that different interpreta tive analytics each contain their own jargon. Because the purpose of the present volume is to explore the use of cognitive linguistics in biblical studies and in order to avoid confusion I will simply engage one portion of socio-rhetorical interpretation that I believe allows biblical scholars to use blending theory effectively. Socio-rhetorical interpreters, especially through the work of the Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity Group, make use of a heuristic category known as a rhetorolect – short for rhetorical dialect. The father of socio-rhetorical interpretati...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Motivating Biblical Metaphors for God - Refining the Cognitive Model
• Looking beyond the Tree in Jeremiah 17:5-8
• “Don’t think of a voice!” - Divine Silence, Metaphor, and Mental Spaces in Selected Psalms of Lament
• The Fruit of the Tree of Life - Ritual Interpretation of the Crucifixion in the Gospel of Philip
• Pauline Rhetorical Invention - Seeing 1 Corinthians 6:12—7:7 through Conceptual Integration Theory
• Sapiential Synesthesia - The Conceptual Blending of Light and Word in Ben Sira’s Wisdom Instruction
• The Cognitive Structures in Galatians 1:4
• Who Is in Charge? - Mental Space Analysis and Visualization in a Textual Study, Applied to 1 Samuel 28:3-25
• Cognitive Grammar at Work in Sodom and Gomorrah
• 1 John 1:5-10: Conditionals and Performativity
• Translating “Thinking” and “Believing” in the Bible - How Cognitive Linguistic Analysis Shows Increasing Subjectivity in Translations
• List of Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index