The Bible
Context Collapse
'When Noah built the ark...': metaphor and Biblical stories in Facebook preaching
Work
Family
- The Bible is full of stories
- The Bible is a rich resource for meaning-making in everyday life (Malley, 2004)
- The words of the Bible are powerful when spoken and/or reevoiced (Foucault, 1981)
Stephen Pihlaja
stephenpihlaja.com
Tinyurl.com/pala2016
@mysonabsalom
Friends
(Marwick & boyd, 2011)
Research Questions
The allegoric impulse
Positioning
Level 1: Characters in story
Level 2: Storyteller & hearer
Level 3: Larger Social World
(Bamberg, 1997)
- How do users present themselves and their beliefs on social media?
- What happens when users have to interact with others who openly oppose them?
- How does talking to a mixed audience affect the way reason, science, and faith are discussed in relation to religion?
Allegorises is 'the "allegorical impulse" fundamental to human cognition, in which we continually seek to connect, in diverse ways, the immediate here and now with more abstract, enduring symbolic themes.' (Gibbs 2011, p. 122)
Case study
Comments
Noah
The Amazing Atheist
Joshua Feuerstein
- 71 videos
- 6:22:00
- 91,592 comments
John Fontain
Hey guys, Josh Feuerstein here. Have you ever been going through a situation, particularly a storm in life, where it just seems like the wind and waves just constantly pound and pelt against you. Well check this out. Not all not every storm is a curse. Some can actually be a blessing. In fact, check this. When it was that when Noah built the ark, well he was in a valley. He built the ark in valley. In a low place. In a desert land. But when he goes through the storm, well the storm takes him and rests him on the mountaintop. There's time in your life that God can allow you to go through a storm. But it's not to persecute you and it's not to punish you. It's actually to elevate you. To take you to another level… I want you know and be encouraged today that God has a strategy in the storm. God bless you guys. Please take a moment, like it. Comment below. And always, please take a moment and hit share. Somebody in your newsfeed or your timeline needs to hear this little word of encouragement. So God bless you guys. Remember: share if you care. Have a very, very beautiful day. (Josh Feuerstein, 2014)
1. ok i have been in the valley for years, i am praying for rain to left me to the mountain top before i dig myself a hole and say forget it forget it all.'
2. Thank you for this word Josh. We have been going through a storm for some time now. The sun peeks through but then the storm seems to get worse again. I know God has a plan and that He is right here with us. Just hearing that God sometimes let's the storm rage and uses it to lift us up out of the valley is encouraging.
June 2014
November 2013
September 2014
References
Findings
Preliminary analysis
Context Collapse
One's
religious community
Bamberg, M. (1997). Positioning between structure and performance. Journal of narrative and life history, 7(1-4), 335-342.
Cameron, Lynne. (2015). Embracing connectedness and change: A complex dynamic systems perspective for applied linguistic research. AILA Review, 28(1), 28-48.
Feuerstein, J. (2014). Untitled Facebook Video. Retrieved from
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=449019238534097
Foucault, Michel. (1981). The orders of discourse. In Robert Young (Ed.), Untying
the Text: A post-structuralist reader. London: Routledge.
Gibbs, R. (2011). The Allegorical Impulse. Metaphor and Symbol, 26(2), 121–130.
Marwick, Alice, & boyd, danah. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114-133.
Malley, Brian. (2004). How the Bible works: An anthropological study of Evangelical Biblicism. Walnut Creek, CA, USA: AltaMira Press.
Pihlaja, S. (2014). Antagonism on YouTube: Metaphor in Online Discourse. London: Bloomsbury
Pihlaja, Stephen (ed.). (forthcoming, 2017) Special Issue: Metaphor in Religion and Spirituality. Metaphor and the Social World.
Pihlaja, Stephen. (forthcoming, 2017) 'When Noah built the ark...': metaphor and Biblical stories in Facebook preaching. Metaphor and the Social World.
Other religious communities & users
The Biblical text gives a narrative structure to experience.
Because there is a metaphorical relationship between the characters in the story and hearers, the metaphor can be expanded, elaborated, etc.
Telling the story gives affordances for new, personal tellings.
Because users must take into account the positions of a multiplicity of viewers, they manipulate their position, approach, and content to meet the needs of a dynamic context
Non-affiliated users