A Research On Leisure Culture Of The Bible From The Perspective Of Register Theory

As a unique cultural phenomenon,leisure mainly refers to people's material and spiritual satisfaction in certain free time,it is not only restricted among ordinary recreational activities,but emphasizes more on a peaceful state of spirit,putting more importance on the pleasure of spirit and self-improvement of life realm.Leisure culture is related to certain period's politics,economy and ethical level.To some extent,culture nourishes leisure,in return,leisure can enrich and improve the quality of culture.The representative of register theory is Halliday,he proposes three register variables:field,tenor and mode.This study is based on the situational analysis of register theory,and supplemented by lexico-grammatical analysis.With the 39 volumes of the Old Testament and27 volumes of the New Testament of the Bible as the textual source of leisure culture analysis,this study divides and classifies the selected corpus according to field,tenor,mode,and the lexico-grammatical system to analyze its leisure culture.Through the analysis of the text of the Bible,this study makes a conclusion about different leisure cultures on situational and lexico-grammatical level.First,on the situational level analysis,this study probes the Bible from the perspective of field,tenor and mode,exploring leisure culture from the perspective of topic,environment and social activities in the field.Among them,the topic,environment and social activities respectively displays the leisure cultural qualities of “The Flow of Humanity”,“The Supreme Love of God” and “The Sublime Virtue of Lord”,presenting leisure culture from ethical perspective.The cultural and natural environment embodies an ecological leisure culture from the leisure cultural qualities of “The Piety in Lord” and “The Harmony between Human and Nature.” While the aesthetic leisure is reflected by the leisure cultural qualities of “Fighting for Freedom” of journey and“Instinctive Gratitude”,which is shown by the celebration of festivals.Mode includes the participant's roles and the affect element,Jesus and the prophet embody spiritual leisure culture,which contains the leisure cultural qualities of “Altruism” and “Wisdom and Goodness” separably.The leisure cultural qualities of “Harmonious,Leisurely and Undisturbed State” incarnated by positive affect and that of “Resentful but Not Angry and“Being Anxious but Be Flexible” reflected by the negative affect shows emotional leisure culture altogether.Through the analyses of the first,second and third person omniscient narration and proverbs,the written and spoken types in mode delivers solemn but jocular leisure culture,presenting the leisure cultural qualities of “Stateliness and Uprightness”,“Favoritism to the World” and “Casualty and Simpleness” and the “External and Internal Cultivation”.Second,on lexico-grammatical level,this study analyzes the leisure text of the Bible from the transitivity system,which can realize ideational function,the mood and modality system that can realize interpersonal function,and the thematic system that can achieve textual function,to reveal the relations of the theme,the characters,the central thought and the text of the Bible.Among them,the material process and mental process under the transitivity system present leisure culture of “Solemn Beauty” and “The Virtue of Obedience”,the mood and modality system reflects leisure culture of “Strict but Merciful,and Affections in All”,while the thematic structure delivers leisure culture of “All Man Are Equal”as well as“Democracy and Concord” these three systems presents the leisure cultural quality of “ Harmony of The Unity”.This thesis tries to use register theory to analyze the Bible,to probe the leisure culture and to explore the cultural qualities in it,meanwhile,it is expected to broaden the research and application scope of register theory and provide meaningful enlightenment for the study of leisure culture and the Bible.