Channels, Fall 2018

Channels • 2018 • Volume 3 • Number 1 Page 17 The Speech Act of Naming in Context: A Linguistic Study of Naming in the Old Testament Lauren Yost English, Literature, and Modern Languages Introduction aming is a reoccurring and significant theme throughout Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. Because of this, scholars should discuss and study it more in depth. The philosophical linguistic speech act theory provides one framework for analyzing naming. Ultimately, naming as presented in the Old Testament is in fact a speech act that is subject to specific rules and carries great importance. I will begin by providing an overview of speech acts and the study of them as applied to Scripture, as well as names and their historical and cultural significance. After this, I will display the framework of my study and then present my findings, followed by a brief discussion. Literature Review Scholars have not studied the speech act of naming much, let alone within biblical texts. And while speech acts have been studied within Scripture to some degree, it is more often applied as a hermeneutic approach, Scripture as being a speech act in and of itself. Because of this, my overview will begin by providing a basic framework of primarily speech act theory and secondly names as reference, which will serve as a foundation for the rest of my study. Next, I will provide a few examples of this kind of study as well as a brief look at God’s own ability to perform speech acts. Lastly, as biblical texts are deeply rooted in history and culture, I will address in this overview various historical and cultural factors that play into the act of naming. Speech Acts and Names (Semantics and Pragmatics) It is not possible within the scope of this study to provide a full coverage and analysis of all that has been said on the topic of speech acts. For my present purpose, then, I will provide a basic overview, which comes mainly from Cruse’s Meaning in Language (2011), a great overview with multiple sources and theories. Two other helpful works I chose to include as supplements are Alston’s Illocutionary Acts & Sentence Meaning (2000) and Korta & Perry’s Critical Pragmatics (2011). I will start by addressing the main focus of my study, speech acts, looking also to the idea of reference under which names typically fall. N