Abstract:
After a promising start, enthusiasm for the use of discourse analysis in the study of biblical texts seems to be waning. Several reasons for this state of affairs are identified: lack of focus, consensus and results, fragmentation and isolation, methodological imperialism, excessive formalisation and schematisation, idiosyncratic tendencies, discrepan-cies between input and output, inability to break out of the mould of the sentence and competition from other disciplines. However, discourse analysis has proven itself as such a useful exegetical instrument that everything should be done to rehabilitate it. Suggestions to this effect are made. South African discourse analysis can make an important contribution towards any future development of discourse analysis.
