Abstract

This dissertation attempts to demonstrate in the work of Augustine the intellectual foundations for a theory of Christian speech. It examines an early and short text entitledThe Teacher in which Augustine considers a version of the Socratic thesis called Meno's paradox. Augustine restates this paradox in such a way as to make the issue of language or speech primary: Why is it that no one teaches without the use of signs, he asks, but no one learns anything from them? His resolution to this question is to suggest that words can prompt us to look for things from which we ultimately will derive knowledge. Language is an instrument which makes our acquisition of knowledge possible but has little worth of its own. In light of this insight, the four chapters provide a close reading of Augustine's comments on language as they are detailed in theories of semiotics, scriptural hermeneutics, and rhetoric in four seminal works that span the course of his lifetime: On Dialectic, The Teacher, On Christian Doctrine, and the Confessions