Abstract

This paper employs Ricoeur's Interpretation Theory to analyze the affect the exclamation mark has on the readers' interpretation of five Book of Mormon editions. Each unique instance of exclamation was obtained with its accompanying verse and these were coded by three coders for the genre they appeared in, the syntactic structures of their utterances, and the rhetorical function of the exclaimed proposition. This made possible a comparison of the exclaimed themes both within and across each genre and across each of the five editions analyzed. While the 1830 edition was found to have many exclamations in the genres of conversation and speech with emphasis on the themes of the love of God, the sacrifice of Christ, and the carnal nature of man, the 1920 edition by contrast saw emphasis mainly in the genres of prayer and aside on the call to repentance, the calamities of hell, and the need to call upon God's grace to overcome the many sins that will beset the latter generation of readers.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Linguistics and English Language

Rights

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