Brief Synopsis of Research
The primary research aim of the dissertation is to reconstruct the systemic relations characterising the Old Testament variety of the religious discourse within the Book of Psalms. The research objectives include analysing high-frequency core concepts and their linguostylistic manifestations to uncover the structural and functional dynamics of this discourse. The study utilizes texts from the King James Version, the Russian Synodal translation and the Leningrad Codex of the Hebrew Bible.
A significant challenge in studying religious discourse lies in the transcendental nature of religious knowledge and the inherently abstract character of its core concepts. To maintain focus, translation variables were deliberately excluded from the score of the research. Instead, priority was given to exploring the ‘text/semiotic invariant’ of the Book of Psalms, ensuring a consistent analytical framework across the studied texts.
The research methodology is grounded in the theoretical framework developed by Vladimir Karasik, representing the Volgograd sociolinguistic school. A multidisciplinary approach was employed, integrating methods from sociolinguistics, social sciences, cognitive studies, cultural studies and religious studies. The findings were derived through qualitative research, utilising discourse, genre, cognitive, content, stylistic and poetic analyses.
The Psalms were classified thematically and generically into three main categories: emotional (including lamentations, complaints, praises and expressions of gratitude), didactic (comprising “royal”, retrospective and instructional psalms) and hybrid varieties that combine features of both.
The research findings reveal a rigid semiotic structure and a distinct correlation of recurring cognitive and verbal devices within the studied religious discourse. The core concepts, norms and values, alongside the key semiotic strategy and its associated tactics, the Bakhtinian chronotope and their interrelations, collectively form the intricate systemic framework of the religious worldview as expressed in the Book of Psalms.
In addition to the institutional characteristics typical of any religious discourse, the studied Old Testament variety is distinguished by its pronounced theocentricity, text-centeredness and clearly defined ethnocultural and religious identity markers. The conceptual structure of this religious discourse is heterogeneous, interwoven with intertextual and interdiscursive elements from existential, spiritual and aesthetic discourses.
The core concepts and their interconnections are expressed through regularly occurring rhetorical devices at various linguistic levels. Repetition, in all its varieties (with syntactic parallelism being the most common), serves as a predominant stylistic and structural factor, performing mnemonic, suggestive, didactic, persuasive and ideological functions. At the lexico-sematic level, somatic synecdoches, reverse metaphors and extended personifications play a pivotal role in revealing the intimate relationship between man and God. The didactic strategy can be considered the foundational system-forming strategy of the studied discourse. Its tactics include stigmatising evaluation, exaggeration, rational argumentation, distancing, appeals to authority and persistent repetition. The primary aim of the didactic strategy is to teach moral insights and instill certain transcendent and sociocultural values.
In Karasik’s (2006) classification, the values and norms of religious discourse are categorised into the following groups:
| Values and norms in RD | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| supermoral | moral | utilitarian | sub-utilitarian |
| individual – God | individual – another individual | individual – oneself | survival needs |
Many core concepts within the Old Testament discourse are found to be interdiscursive. In retrospective psalms, the chronotope, composed of artfully arranged spatial concepts, operates within a complex temporal system. Notably, the linear time of the institutional religious discourse is closely intertwined with the reversible time characteristic of both ‘artistic’ and ‘spiritual’ discourses.
According to Karasik (2006), the script-type macroconcept ‘faith’ is identified as the central concept of religious discourse. Our findings reveal that it comprises four continuously evolving frame-type concepts within the religious discourse of the Old Testament.
| Frame concepts in religious discourse | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Super-Agent | Agents | Recipients | Old Testament Religion |
| God | patriarchs, prophets, priests | ‘the righteous’ and ‘the wicked’, plants and animals, inanimate objects | a system of beliefs |
These frame concepts reflect continuous overlapping and interpenetration of various, including polar, worlds and forms of symbolic existence. The Super-Agent emerges as the most complex and multifaceted macroconcept due to its multi-layered structure and high degree of abstractness. It is symbolically represented through a wide array of explicit anthropomorphic and socially significant images: ‘king’, ‘judge’, ‘warrior’, ‘vine gardener’, ‘plowman’, ‘shepherd’, ‘bridegroom’ and, notably, an implicit ‘mother bird’.
The results of the study demonstrate clearly marked systemic relations within the anthropocentric and activity-centered conceptual worldview of the Old Testament religious discourse, as reconstructed through the oldest English and Russian translations of the Book of Psalms. These intertextual and interdiscursive relations, which connect core concepts, actors, chronotope, goals, values and norms, strategies and tactics through their regularly recurring linguistic and poetic manifestations, construct an intricate network of the studied religious discourse, (re-)creating and reinforcing its highly ritualistic and didactic structure.