Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1990. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-180).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1993. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1995. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-268).

The thesis deals with the theory of metaphor in selected pieces of research that focus on autism spectrum disorders. Patients with autism spectrum disorders show weakened ability to communicate and they have trouble understanding everyday social interactions as they are not able to identify with thoughts and feelings of others. They also have trouble understanding metaphors, irony, hyperbolical speech, etc. In their book Metaphors we live by Lakoff and Johnson claim that our language and our thinking are based on metaphors, i.e. on abstraction. The hypothesis is that various pieces of research focusing on how people on the autism spectrum understand metaphors draw on different definitions of metaphor and different approaches to it. The theory of metaphor that is presented in Lakoff's and Johnson's work should be able to provide theoretical framework for coherent understanding of a metaphor. It should also have the potential to point out the differences between particular pieces of research and possible shortages within them.

In this dissertation, I explore to address the problem of the identity of Paul’s interlocutor(s) in Rom 1–3 and the subsequent issue of whether Paul only includes non-Jewish Gentiles as recipients of his gospel teaching. In order to deal with the research question in a linguistically informed manner, I draw from Systemic Functional Linguistics and use two related notions of cohesive chains and grammatical metaphor (nominalization). By applying both methods to the text, I identify twenty-three active cohesive chains and five most important instances of nominalization in the text. Based on the linguistic data elicited solely by examining the interaction patterns among the chains and by explicating the various textual effects that nominalization brings about, I conclude that the linguistic evidence points to the possibility that the interlocutor is an ethnically Jewish man and Paul thus does not exclude his fellow Jews from his presentation of the gospel in Rom 1–3.