The Contribution of Metadiscourse to the Illocutionary Logic of Winthrop’s A Modell of Christian Charitiy

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the analysis of metadiscourse in Winthrop’s 1630 sermon A Modell of Christian Charity, considered a kind of “Ur-text of American literature”.¹

1 Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal, 72.

A lot has been written on it from the socio-historical and cultural point of view, much less instead from the linguistic point of view. In this study I analyze the manifestation of metadiscourse in the Modell, i.e. all those elements in a text which do not add new material to the text proposition but which are used to refer to already existing text-propositional elements. The approach I follow is theoretically speech-act based, and methodologically qualitative. It is aimed at showing how metadiscursive devices contribute to the illocutionary logic of the sermon and, in so doing, create the logical foundations for the collective action that Winthrop asked the participants in the Great Migration to accomplish in the New World.

KEYWORDS:

• A Modell of Christian Charity
• illocutionary logic
• John Winthrop
• intertextual metadiscourse
• intratextual metadiscourse
• Puritan sermon

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal, 72.

2 Citations are taken from A Modell of Christian Charity, in Winthrop’s Papers, Volume II 1623–1630. The Massachusetts Historical Society, pp. 282–295, 1931.

3 Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal, 72.

4 Morrison, Builders, 72–73.

5 Browne, “Errand into Mercy,” 2.

6 Browne, “Errand into Mercy,” 2.

7 Vergaro, “Come fare le cose” and Id., “Logica illocutoria” represent an exception in that in these two papers the focus is, respectively, on the rhetorical macro-structure and speech-act analysis of the sermon.

8 Browne, “Errand into Mercy,” 9.

9 Metadiscourse analysis in sermonic preaching is, in general, scarce (see Malmström, “Engaging the Congregation”).

10 Searle and Vanderveken, Foundations.

11 Vanderveken, “Illocutionary Logic,” 246.

12 The direction of fit is “the way in which a propositional content is related to a world of utterance” (Searle and Vanderveken, Foundations, 52).

13 Miller, “Genre as Social Action.”

14 It is beyond the scope of the present paper to discuss the significant amount of research on the notion of genre. For an overview of recent developments, see Vergaro, “A Cognitive Framework.”

15 Sbisà, Linguaggio, Ragione, Interazione, 31. “Each of us does something in uttering. In particular, in the intersubjective relationships she enters, each of us has, does, undoes and changes – starting from one’s own language – powers and relationships.”

16 Ibid., 273. “its capacity to place and change subjects at different levels and with different types of effects.”

17 Bonazzi, Sacro Esperimento; Id., “Città sulla Collina.”

18 Dawson, “Rite of Passage”; Id., “Colonial Discourse.”

19 Bremer, Founding Father.

20 Schweitzer, “American Affiliation.”

21 Green, Print and Protestantism; Neuman, Jeremiah’s Scribes.

22 Indeed, the only mention of the sermon during the 17th century is found in a letter from Reverend Henry Hacie to John Winthrop jr. in which, among his requests, he includes “The Modell of Charity.” For about two centuries after this mention, at the end of the 1830s, the importance of the sermon begins to be recognized. Yet there are no clear mentions but only allusions to the Modell (see Dawson, “Rite of Passage”; Bremer, Founding Father). However, there has been a general consensus that Winthrop is the author of the Modell (see Bremer, Founding Father; Rodgers, City on a Hill), with the only very recent exceptions of McGann, “Christian Charity” and Van Engen, City on a Hill.

23 Rodgers, City on a Hill.

24 McGann, “Christian Charity.”

25 Michelsen, “John Winthrop’s Model”; Crilly, “John Winthrop.”

26 Bercovitch, “Puritan Origins Revised,” 40.

27 On John Winthrop, see a. o. Gray, “Political Thought”; Johnson, “Economic Ideas”; Morgan, Puritan Dilemma; Bremer, “Heritage of John Winthrop”; Crilly, “John Winthrop.” And, more recently, Bremer, Founding Father; Id., “John Winthrop”; Schweitzer, “American Affiliation”; Rodgers, City on a Hill.

28 Bercovitch, Puritan Origins; Green, Print and Protestantism; Bremer, Founding Father; Kohnen, “Religious Discourse”; Rütten, How to do things; Id., “Forms.”

29 Clement, “Introduction,” 655.

30 Giltrow, “Meta-Genre.”

31 Reid, “Puritan Rhetoric,” 67.

32 Searle, “Classification of Illocutionary Acts.”

33 Reid, “Puritan Rhetoric.”

34 Vande Kopple, “Exploratory Discourse,” 83.

35 Hyland, “Metadiscourse,” 16.

36 Id.

37 Mauranen, Cultural Differences.

38 Hyland, “Metadiscourse,” 17.

39 Vande Kopple, “Exploratory Discourse”; Crismore and Farnsworth, “Mr Darwin”; Crismore et al., “Metadiscourse in Persuasive Writing”; Mauranen, Cultural Differences; Conte, “Metatestualità”; Dahl, “Textual Metadiscourse.”

40 Ifantidou, “Semantics and Pragmatics”; Boggel, Metadiscourse.

41 Beauvais, “Speech act.”

42 Hyland, Metadiscourse.

43 Ädel, Metadiscourse.

44 Hyland, “Metadiscourse.”

45 Hyland, Metadiscourse.

46 Hyland, “Metadiscourse,” 18.

47 Ibid., 27.

48 Boggel, Metadiscourse.

49 Hyland, “Metadiscourse.”

50 Beauvais, “Speech act.”

51 Ibid., 14.

52 In Austin, How to do Things, 161, expositive speech acts are those acts that refer to “the expounding of views, the conducting of arguments, and the clarifying of references.”

53 Boggel, Metadiscourse.

54 Ibid., 30.

55 Boggel, Metadiscourse, 42–43

56 Boggel, Metadiscourse, 36.

57 Kohnen, “Directives”; Id. “Religious discourse.

58 Rütten, How to do things; Id., “Forms.”

59 Boggel, Metadiscourse.

60 Boggel, Metadiscourse, 47ff.

61 Ibid., 54ff.

62 Ibid.

63 Vergaro, Modello di Carità Cristiana.

64 Vergaro, “Come fare le cose”; Id., “Logica illocutoria.”

65 Schmid, “Lexico-Grammatical Patterns”; Id., “Cognitive Linguistics”; Id., “Understanding Entrenchment”; Id., “Soziokognitives Modell.”

66 Vergaro, “Cognitive Framework.”

67 Searle, “Classification of Illocutionary Acts.”

68 Kissine, “Illocutionary Forces”; Id., From Utterances to Speech Acts, analyzes directive speech acts as reasons to act because, in his words “that an event is a justificatory reason for X to do a does not entail that it causes X to do a.” Kissine, From Utterances to Speech Acts, 104.

69 On the influence of Ramistic logic on Puritan sermon style, see Rechtien, “Logic in Puritan Sermons.”

70 Reid, “Puritan Rhetoric”; Bremer, Founding Father; Rodgers, City on a Hill.

71 Boggel, Metadiscourse, 154.

72 Browne, “Errand into Mercy,” 17.

73 Boggel, Metadiscourse, 6.

74 Gotti, “Shall and Will.”

75 Bercovitch, “Puritan Origins Revisited,” 44–45.

76 Sbisà, Linguaggio, Ragione, Interazione.

77 Id.

78 Parrett, “Indirection, Manipulation and Seduction,” 223.

79 Morrissey, “Exhortation and Sympathy.”

80 Ibid., 665.

81 Ibid., 668.

82 Clement, “Art of Feeling,” 676–679.

83 Ibid., 686.

84 As Schweitzer, “American Affiliation,” correctly underlines, in Winthrop’s vision, the perfection of the ligament among the parts of the body does not mean that social inequalities should not exist. Indeed, the perfection Winthrop talks about “is the achievement of equality through sympathy across difference.” Ibid., 449.

85 Rodgers, City on a Hill, 43–44.

86 Bertuccelli Papi, “Referenza e Allusione,” 195.

87 “For an allusion to occur it is necessary that the addressor has the intention to attribute the addressee the responsibility to find the concept that is intended in his/her encyclopedia. However, the concept remains just evoked.”

88 Hyland, “Meatdiscourse,” 27.

89 Malmström, “Engaging the Congregation.”

90 Browne, “Errand into Mercy,” 8ff.

91 Ibid., 26.

92 Plumstead, “Introductory Essay,” 31.