Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Besides the discourses of politics, advertising and marketing, which are generally considered persuasive by definition (van Dijk 1998, 2008), in many ways it is the religious discourse that adopts persuasion as one of its essential instruments to convince the audience of the truthfulness of the doctrine it presents, be it sermons, theological treatises, doxologies, personal testimonies, evangelistic texts, apologetic argumentation, or the Bible itself (Lempert 2015, Adam 2017, 2019, Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. 2020). The proposed corpus-driven paper explores the persuasive strategies and linguistic means employed to convey persuasion in English Protestant sermons. It strives to shed light on the rhetorical role of pathos, which is purposefully evoked by the preacher via affect; stirred emotions are to boost the persuasive effect, i.e. to promote the doctrine and to make the believers comprehend and accept spiritual truths. Special attention will also be paid to the blurred borderline between the intentional use of sentimentality and manipulation.