Abstract
The study is an investigation into the various ways pulpit preachers in Christian religion elicit responses from their congregation. The data for the study consists of messages delivered from the pulpit at denominational, non-denominational and interdenominational Christian services in South-Western Nigeria. Working within the framework of Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis, the analyses reveal that preachers control the discourse, while the worshippers share in the process of creation of the text as it unfolds. For instance, they determine what responses are given, how they should be given and when to give them. It was also observed that response elicitation is done through the use of interrogatives, declaratives and imperatives, and such responses may come in forms of speech, physical action, and mental behaviour. Our analyses reveal a preponderance of spoken responses in the data. Five kinds of spoken responses are identified in the data, namely: Conventional Answer (CA), Response to Prayers (RP), Repeated Statements (RS), Gap Filling (GF), and Corrected Statement (CS). The study concludes that despite that the way responses are elicited depends largely on the practices of any religious community, certain patterns of elicitation are common in ECPD. The degree of control and the kind of response elicited by a preacher are determined by the language expectations of the community. Such expectations include knowledge of the language code, principles, norms, use, situation and the world of such religious communities.
Highlights
It is structured in such a way as to reflect what the communication is all about, the interpersonal relationship between the participants, which is determined by the social roles and relationships between the interlocutors, and the role the language is playing in the interaction
Crystal and Davy (1969) identify different shades of the language of religion: the language of liturgy, sermon, theological discourse and biblical translation. They conclude that the linguistic features which uniquely identify texts as belonging to the single variety of religious English are concentrated on the vocabulary and in certain parts of the grammar (p. 159)
Analyses revealed that Christian pulpit preachers elicit more spoken responses, as shown in the tables above where there was a preponderance of spoken responses in the three methods (Interrogative INSR: 43.14%; Declarative Declarative with Spoken Response (DESR): 91.94%; Imperative Imperative with Spoken Response (IMSR): 58.06%)
Summary
Crystal and Davy (1969) identify different shades of the language of religion: the language of liturgy, sermon, theological discourse and biblical translation They conclude that the linguistic features which uniquely identify texts as belonging to the single variety of religious English are concentrated on the vocabulary and in certain parts of the grammar Keane's study addresses the highly marked uses of linguistic resources in religious language, which is taken to include practices such as "magic" and divination (which some definitions of religion exclude). Rotimi Taiwo: Response Elicitation in English-medium Christian Discourse (ECPD) 129 categorization of Churches into evangelical, pentecostal and orthodox. Orthodox churches typically refer to churches that precede the era of Pentecostalism They are known to believe in and follow a specific mode of worship that is characterized by chanting of canticles (religious songs derived from the Bible) and quiet prayers. Some churches that are grouped by virtue of their historical origin as orthodox (ie, churches that precede Pentecostalism) may be characterized as evangelical by virtue of their doctrines and beliefs, eg, the Anglican Church and the Presbyterian Church
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