"There's a Word From the Lord Today": A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Sermons in Context

257 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997.Sermons as texts produced within contexts are revealing of the ways in which complex systems of knowledge and belief are shared and indexed by members of a congregation, and they also represent specific instantiations of broader cultural, religious, and historical contexts. In this study, sermons, and interpretations of sermons, were examined to explore the ways in which language is used in specific contexts to accomplish a variety of social purposes. Sermons from Anglo- and African-American churches in central Illinois, and responses to the sermons by the pastors who preached them and by church members were analyzed using a modified version of the Ethnography of Communication model developed by Hymes and Saville-Troike. The Ethnography of Communication model is critiqued, and the ideas of other researchers, most notably Bakhtin, are incorporated to arrive at a more complete description of the sermon-giving event in the two different contexts. The study culminates in a discussion about the nature of genres, and their relationship with other components of a communicative interaction. Additional conclusions about the nature of language use, genre, and inter-ethnic communication are also suggested.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD