HORTATORY WORKSHOP FOR CIC FACILITATORS

The Hortatory Discourse Workshop for CIC Facilitators will be held in May, 2015. The workshop
leader will be Carla Bartsch.
SELECTING AND PREPARING A HORTATORY TEXT FOR ANALYSIS
Each team will also analyze a letter giving advice in their target language, in order to use what
you learn to make Jesus’ sermon in Luke 6 and the Epistle of Titus sound natural in your
language.
Here is what to bring to the workshop:
1) A letter giving advice or a recorded and transcribed talk in which a person gives
advice in your target language should be charted before the workshop, following
the instructions given below.
2) Also bring one or two prayers in your target language.
3) Bring a translation of the Lord's Prayer in your language (Luke 11:2-4). The prayers
do not need to be charted.
4) If you are able to obtain a sermon in the target language, you can also use it during the
workshop to look for natural features of the language. The sermon does not need to be
charted, unless you want to analyze it in depth along with the analysis of your advice
text.
Choosing an advice text (a letter or a recorded talk giving advice): A good hortatory text
for analysis should include some reasons for the change in behavior that the author wants—it
should not have just exhortations, with no reasons given. This will make it more like the
Epistles.
Examples of letters giving advice: An adult giving advice to another adult would be the
most desirable type of text, e.g., a pastor or mature Christian giving advice to a younger
Christian about how to live the Christian life, a parent advising an adult child who is getting
married or giving him/her advice on raising children; an elder giving advice to adults in the
people group about proper conduct in the home, the community, or the church.
Tips for choosing a text
a) Letters or talks giving advice should be written or spoken by someone who gives good
advice that others pay attention to---an elder, a parent, a pastor, etc.
b) If you do not have an advice text, but you do have a sermon in which the pastor or speaker
is asking for a change in behavior, you may chart the sermon for the workshop.
c) The advice text should be of medium length – 15-40 sentences, or 1-3 pages, double-
spaced.
d) The text should not be translated from another language.1 Translated texts tend to follow
the patterns of the language from which they are translated, especially the word order and the
way the clauses are arranged.
e) In general, advice texts should have some unifying theme, or have several sections with
different themes. It should not be just a series of exhortations on a variety of subjects. A letter,
however, may have two or more sections with different themes.
f) When you are collecting your text(s), be sure to keep a record of the circumstances under
which each text was obtained. If you ask for a text on a particular subject, for example, the
author may begin the text with the assumption that his audience already knows what he is going
to talk about. Tell who is in the audience (even if the audience is just the person who recorded
the text.) Tell the approximate age of the author, the date, the place, and the language and
dialect in which the text was given. Mention whether or not you have the permission of the
author to analyze the text and share what you learn about the language with others.

1 Levinsohn 2003: NARR01.rtf, p. 1

g) Ask the author of the text to make any changes in the text that he or she wishes to make, so
that it will “sound good”. The author should read the text through or listen to it at least twice to
make any corrections in wording that s/he thinks are needed. This will give you a well-formed
text to analyze.
If the author is unavailable to go over the text, a fluent speaker of the language could edit it.
Before that person makes any changes, he or she should read or listen to the whole text. (If this
person wants to make a lot of changes in the wording, however, just use the text as it is. The
purpose of the editing is just to correct grammatical mistakes.)
PREPARING A CHARTED TEXT FOR ANALYSIS
Text Preparation2
1. A work chart should be prepared in either an Excel spreadsheet or a Table in your word-
processing program (preferably a table). [If your text has been glossed using Flex, it is
recommended that you export it and chart it in a Word Table or an Excel file or, so that you
will be able to color-code participants and verbs, and add extra columns for your analysis.]
If you are using a Table, use ‘landscape orientation’ and narrow margins.3
2. Make four columns in your chart. (See the sample chart below.)
a. The 1st column will be for the Pattern of the text. Leave this column blank until the
workshop begins.
b. In the 2nd column each clause should be given a number. If there is more than one
clause in a sentence, use letters after the number to indicate each new clause, e.g.,
1a,1b,1c for a sentence with 3 clauses.
c. The 3rd column: The text. There should be only one clause per line. Each new clause
in a sentence should begin a new line (a new cell) in the chart.
d. The 4th column: Analysis of the text. Leave this column blank until the workshop begins
[If you want to use a more complex chart, in place of the single “Story” column, you can put
columns for Introducer/Connector, Preverb, Verb, Postverb, and Analysis, as follows:
Pattern of the Number Introducer/ Preverb Verb Postverb Analysis
Text Connector
3. For each clause your chart should have
a) a text line
b) a glossary line, showing a definition for each word or morpheme. If you are not sure
of the definition for a particular word or part of a word, put a question mark, so it will not
be overlooked if it is a discourse marker. It is especially important that the verb forms
be correctly identified. If your language has focus or emphasis markers, identify them in
the glossary line.
c) An understandable English back-translation should also be given for each sentence,
so that the instructor can give guidance to each team.
4. SAMPLE CHART
Schema (Pattern) No. Text Analysis
1 
-

oh I.OBL-POSS oh.children you.PL liquor don’t drink-

PRE.PL
Oh! My children, you don't drink liquor.
2 -

Liquor PTCL one poison like be-PRE

Liquor is like poison.

3a 

2 These instructions are based on text preparation instructions used by John Tuggy and Lou Hohulin and have been modified
somewhat by C. Bartsch. Comments from Stephen Levinsohn’s text preparation instructions have also been added.
3 Levinsohn 2003. NARRO1.RTF, p. 8.
 
Liquor drink one.who.drinks men.OBL-POSS eye.OBL
you.PL see
3b 
He.ERG-POSS eye.OBL complete red red see
-PASS
If you see the eyes of the person who
drinks liquor, his eyes are seen completely
red.
Abbreviations: ERG ergative, PASS passive, PL plural, POSS possessive, PRES present,
PTCL particle
5. Do not rearrange the order of the words or phrases in a clause or sentence.
6. When the verb is implied, put a ø (null) symbol where the verb would be in the clause.
7. Put each subordinate clause in italics. (Clauses with connectors like 'if', 'because',
'when', 'after', etc. are subordinate clauses.) Examples: 'If a child will not listen,'
'because he studied well',' when he obeyed his father,' 'after he finished his work,' etc.
8. If you can recognize relative clauses that describe a noun, put them in italics, too.
Relative clauses use 'who', 'which', or 'that' to describe the noun they are describing.
Examples: Friends who are a good influence, deeds which they should not do, the
student that refuses to study.
9. Be sure to include at the end of your chart a list of abbreviations used in the chart and
what they mean.
10. After you have finished charting your text, please email a copy to the workshop
leader at this e-address: carla_bartsch@sil.org. Carla will send you some
feedback, so that your text will be correctly charted and ready to analyze. Carla
needs to receive your charted text by May 9 or before. If you prefer, you may chart a
few sentences and then send them to Carla for feedback, then send the chart to her
again after you incorporate the suggestions and complete the chart.
Carla is willing to answer any questions you may have about choosing and
charting your text.
11. If you will be doing your analysis on paper, you will need to print out three copies of your
text. If you prefer to do all of your analysis on your computer, you will not need to print
out your charted text before you analyze it.
If you have any questions about choosing and charting your text, kindly contact Carla at:
carla_bartsch@sil.org.
BRING THE FOLLOWING WITH YOU TO THE WORKSHOP:
 Your charted advice text. If you are going to do your analysis on a hard copy rather than
on the computer, bring 3 hard copies of the text and a set of colored pencils and an
eraser.
 Translation of the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11:2-4 in your target language.
 One or more natural prayers in your target language that you can compare with your
translation of the Lord's Prayer.
 If you are analyzing an oral text, bring the audio recording of the text (to check your
analysis of such features as sentence & paragraph breaks)
 A sermon in your target language, if you have one, to compare your findings with.
 Other advice texts in your target language, if you have them, to compare your findings
with.
 A pioneer spirit, anticipating interesting discoveries about your language that
will enhance your translation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Levinsohn, Stephen. 2003. Analysis of narrative texts. Lectures given at Horsley’s Green,
England. (Unpublished, available in e-files.)