A taxonomy of behavioural discourse : a linguistic investigation into the strategies of preaching in Moby Dick and Adam Bede

Abstract EN

In Melville’s Moby Dick and George Eliot’s Adam Bede, two sermons are delivered, which interrupt the narrative line and disrupt its conventional template.

A minor character in the former, viz., Father Mapple, and a secondary character, a woman Quakerpreacher, viz., Dinah in the latter, do the speaking.

The paper attempts to define and outline the characteristics specific to behavioural instances that happen to embed in narrative discourse in pursuit of a more universal taxonomy germane to behavioural discourse in general.

The sermons disturb the narrative flow as they formally deviate from the norms of narration since such features like mood/modality, clause structure, tense, etc, operate to set them apart.

Upon the analysis of the two behavioural instances, results come out in support of a behavioural template that can tentatively account for the behavioural discourse in English.

Behavioural/hortatory distinctive constructions are outlined and analyzed in search for a hortatory template and thematic interpretation.