Each of my students has been assigned one section of the Book of Mormon to study more closely, using Grant Hardy's Reader's Edition. For Friday, October 3, they are to review their assigned section, looking exclusively through the lens of rhetoric and spoken discourse.
In a short blog post (for which they should use the label "Book of Mormon Speaking"), they are to account for the spoken word as it occurs in their section of the Book of Mormon. They should do so in the following way:
- List the incidents of the spoken word that occur, labeling these according to their genre (sermon, dialogue, prayer, etc.). For it to count as spoken word, there must be a primary audience from the speaker's time. In other words, "speaking" to the future through written form doesn't count.
- If there is NOT any spoken word in the student's assigned section, he/she should go to a neighboring section and look there. After finding a given instance of public speaking or the spoken word, the student should characterize it and analyze it using the rhetorical concepts of audience, decorum, context (kairos), rhetorical appeals (logos, pathos, ethos), logical proof, arrangement, and stylistic use of language. This should go beyond prior efforts to bring rhetorical analysis to bear on the Book of Mormon and should, if possible, link to others' sections or analyses.
A third part of the assignment -- though not to be included in the Friday blog post -- will be to watch General Conference carefully for 1) how speakers use the Book of Mormon (as a topic, as support for another topic, manner of citation or manner of representing the stories or ideas in it); and 2) any quotations of or references to their assigned section of the Book of Mormon. They are to bring these notes to class on Monday to use in our discussion.
As a help for this, students have the option of using this Google Document where they can help one another to keep track of any references to the Book of Mormon across the conference.
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