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Item Open Access The story of Jesus and the blind man: a speech act reading of John 9(Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, 2015) Ito, HisayasuAbstract not availableItem Open Access Contextual survey of John 9 - Chapter 3(Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, 2015) Ito, HisayasuThe question of which conditions and rules are required for successful conversation is important for a speech act analysis. Appropriateness conditions provide an answer to this question. Searle suggests felicity conditions for individual speech acts. For conversational purposes, Grice suggests the Cooperative Principle; Leech submits Interpersonal and Textual Rhetorics; Bach and Harnish pose three presumptions and mutual contextual beliefs, and Pratt adds the notion of display text. These concepts are all realisations of appropriateness conditions. Before closely analysing the text of John 9, this chapter will consider the entire story itself in the light of these conditions. As part of this consideration, Johannine symbolism and the motif of suffering will also be discussed. As for these appropriateness conditions, I would like to remind my reader again that my speech act approach recognises the importance of contexts, namely historical, social, cultural, religious, linguistic, literary, and so on, because the contexts for a specific speech situation play an important role in interpretation, especially in determining the meaning of a certain utterance, passage or section (cf. Significance of context, section 3.1 in Chapter 2). Findings and insights concerning these contexts from previous works, including those from historical criticism, will greatly help my analysis. Therefore, I shall attempt to identify the most plausible contexts for John 9, summarising the views of other scholars, conversing with them, and providing my own assessments, where necessary. It is hoped that identifying the most plausible contexts could form a basis for a moderate example of the attempt to combine the use of historical and literary approaches. This is a strength of my approach, and should not be viewed as a redundant representation of arguments by secondary sourcesItem Open Access Appendix 1 - Diagrams of taxonomy of speech acts(Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, 2015) Ito, HisayasuTerms and definitions are taken from Bach and Harnish 1979Item Open Access Introduction - Chapter 1(Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, 2015) Ito, HisayasuSince the enigmatic nature of John's Gospel has attracted a great deal of attention from many scholars, numerous studies of this Gospel have been produced. Each endeavour to understand the Gospel demonstrates its own uniqueness, and utilises one of various methodological approaches to suit its particular research purpose. Methodologically, however, modern critical research on this Gospel can be roughly divided into two categories, namely historical approaches and literary approaches, which some scholars further divide into ideological (theological) approaches. One should bear in mind that these categories are merely a simple and provisional depiction of the complex research done on the Gospel. It is thus difficult to classify all works neatly into one of these categories. Since comprehensive bibliographies concerning Johannine research are available to us, in this section I wish to concentrate more on particular research on John 9Item Open Access Acknowledgements(Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State, 2015) Ito, HisayasuThis book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation (2000) written during my stay in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where I conducted research at the University of the Free State. This is one of the main reasons why this book is being published as a Supplementum to Acta Theologica. Consequently, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the University for this opportunity.