Syntagmatic conformity: Blessings and curses in Winthrop’s Christian Charitie

Abstract

Despite all the attention Puritan sermons have received, no attention has been specifically devoted to the analysis of the two speech acts of blessing and cursing in these sermons from a cognitive-pragmatic point of view. This study aims at doing this, focussing on Winthrop’s A Modell of Christian Charity as a case study. I use the framework provided by the Entrenchment and Conventionalization Model – a usage-based and emergentist model of language knowledge and convention – and analyse how the syntagmatic association of the two speech acts contributes to the conformity profile of the sermon. Moreover, I argue that this linguistic lens can add to the understanding of the ‘enargetic’ rhetoric of the text.