Template:StoryBehindIntro

The "Story behind the Psalm" is the capstone of our semantic analysis. The first three steps of our semantic analysis (Lexical Semantics, Phrase-Level Semantics, Verbal Semantics) have focused on the level of words and phrases. In the "Story behind the Psalm" we analyze the meaning of sentences and larger units of discourse, up to and including the entire psalm. The goal of this layer is to reconstruct and visualise a mental representation of the text as the earliest hearers/readers might have conceptualised it. We start by identifying the propositional content of each clause in the psalm, and then we identify relevant assumptions implied by each of the propositions. During this process, we also identify and analyse metaphorical language (“imagery”). Finally, we try to see how all of the propositions and assumptions fit together to form a coherent mental representation. The main tool we use for structuring the propositions and assumptions is a story triangle, which visualises the rise and fall of tension within a semantic unit. Although story triangles are traditionally used to analyse stories in the literary sense of the word, we use them at this layer to analyse “stories” in the cognitive sense of the word—i.e., a story as a sequence of propositions and assumptions that has tension.