Article published in:
The Conversation Frame: Forms and functions of fictive interaction
Edited by Esther Pascual and Sergeiy Sandler
[Human Cognitive Processing 55] 2016
► pp. 131–150

Invocation or apostrophe?

Prayer and the conversation frame in public discourse

| Rutgers University Camden, USA
| Case Western Reserve University, USA
We investigate how idioms of prayer operate along a complex set of rhetorical dimensions, all of which take the conversation frame as a starting point. We present results of a search of idioms from the UCLA NewsScape archive. After distinguishing invocationary acts of the divine from the more “fossilized” apostrophic (i.e. fictive) reference to the divine, we propose a four-dimensional model of prayer. Each dimension is an axis bounded by two poles: factive/ fictive, pathos, ethos, and attitude. Instances of prayer often manifest alignments and misalignments along one or more of these axes.
Keywords: broadcast television, fictivity, rhetorical analysis, rhetorical figures
Published online: 01 November 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.55.07fit
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