Abstract
This thesis is an application of M. A. K. Halliday’s functional grammar to the study of transitivity-based foregrounding in selected episodes of Acts, specifically, The Pentecost episode (Acts 2), the episode of Stephen’s arrest and defense (Acts 6-7), the episode of Paul’s arrest and defense (Acts 21-22), and shipwreck episode (Acts 27). Functional grammar is further applied to the Acts narrative in two excursi, the first one dealing with the translation of foregrounding (excursus to chapter 2), and the second offering a comparison of Luke’s two major summaries of Israel’s history from the perspective of personal reference and the interpersonal function of language (excursus to chapter 3). The functional grammatical analysis of these major Acts episodes is preceded by a detailed discussion of Halliday’s theory, especially as it relates to and shares the same aims as rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. Among these aims is, first, to analyse and explain the relationships that exist between the linguistic choices made by writers in texts and the various effects that those choices have upon readers and/or hearers. Understood within the Hallidayan framework as prominence that is both consistent and motivated, foregrounding is shown to be a fundamentally rhetorical and literary device that deserves much greater attention than it has heretofore received from rhetorical critics and other students of the New Testament. The functional grammatical study of the selected Acts episodes shows that choices from the transitivity network of Greek, that is, the set of linguistic items that answers the ‘who does what to whom’ set of questions, is central to Luke’s foregrounding scheme in Acts, and offers a linguistically-based perspective on his overall concern to underline the supremacy of the divine will on the stage of human affairs.