CHARACTERISTICS OF TEMPO AND PAUSES OF ENGLISH SERMON IN FILM DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the temporal (tempo and pause) organization of monologue-type utterances of preaching character in English-language feature films. Since the rhetorical actions of the preacher are realized not only during the ritual church sermon from the pulpit, but also involve situational speeches outside the temple and private conversations with parishioners on spiritual topics, the article examines the temporal organization of these three types of speech activity of the preacher, since they are a component of priest’s speech behaviour in various communicative situations. Examining the peculiarities of religious discourse from the point of view of pragmasemantics made it possible to focus on the basic concept of this special discourse — the concept of “faith”, since it is not only a unit of the mental lexicon, but also that spiritual support that reflects the peculiarities of the spiritual mentality of a religious person. The research material, consisting of oral English-language sermons, speeches, and conversations extracted from five contemporary English-language feature films, was subjected to perceptual, auditory, and instrumental analysis. A complex auditory and instrumental analysis of the temporal characteristics of preachers’ speech allows us to conclude that there is a correlation between changes in the rate of the preacher’s speech and his assessment of the communicative and pragmatic value of his speech. A separate study of the functioning of pauses of various types (structural, rhetorical, and hesitation pauses) in the studied speech material proved the great pragmatic potential of this intonation parameter in fulfilling the communicative task of oral religious discourse.