Lesson 1 | Restatement
One Way to Say Five Things
Join me in a brief experiment: Say the sentence, “I didn’t steal your money” out loud five times with the accent on a different word each time.
I didn’t steal your money. I didn’t steal your money. I didn’t steal your money. I didn’t steal your money. I didn’t steal your money.
You’ve just said five very different things! We learn from this that a speaker’s tone of voice matters. And the same is true for an author’s! While it is not always easy to discern an author’s tone from a written text, it is not as hard as you might expect.
How Do We Paraphrase Tone?
Even after we have captured the tone in our reading, it can still be very difficult to communicate it in writing. However, slight changes in grammar, clarifying phrases, or even punctuation can help us communicate it in a paraphrase. Consider the following alterations of the sentences above.
I didn’t steal your money. It wasn’t me who stole your money.
I didn’t steal your money. I did not, under any circumstances, steal your money.
I didn’t steal your money. I did something with your money, but I didn’t steal it.
I didn’t steal your money. You were not the one I stole money from.
I didn’t steal your money. I didn’t steal your money, but I did steal something else from you.
Paul's Tone (and God's Tone Through Him)
Carefully read the following passages and pay particular attention to the author’s tone. Each one has a clear, strong exhortation, yet the variation in tone is remarkable!
In Philippians 4, Paul is calling out individuals by name, appealing to them to work out some personal conflict. Yet he is not harsh but gentle and winsome, appealing to the mature character of these believers for whom he has much affection.
By contrast, Paul’s letter to the Galatians is quite sharp. (There is not even a warm greeting at the start of the letter.) In the passage above, Paul is bold, directly spelling out the problem in an almost curt fashion. When he addresses the opponents of the gospel, he is graphically sarcastic. His blunt tone is purposefully aimed at raising awareness to the seriousness of the issues. He has no less affection for the Galatians than for the Philippians; it is just that they are on the very brink of total shipwreck and so his admonition has an appropriate intensity.
Read these two texts once more, this time out loud, seeking to faithfully convey Paul’s tone for each in your reading.