Smyrnova M. Sermon in the Orthodox Discourse of the XX Century: Pragmatic Aspect

The thesis focuses on a pragmatic study of sermon in the Orthodox discourse of the XX century. The investigation is based on Ukrainian, Russian, English and Greek sermons. The top priority is given to providing explanations of the sermon as a genre in the church discourse. The thesis is organized in four chapters. The first one provides the theoretical background for discourse studies in general and for religious discourse in particular. Thus it involved an account of recent developments of discourse studies. Discourse is handled by analyzing different schools of thought to clearly outline the reasons for known classifications of the issue in question. Attention is paid to lexical, syntactic, communicative and discourse characteristics of the Orthodox sermon. Chapter 2 provides explanation of basic approaches used in this investigation. The central focus is therefore upon the principles, methods, techniques and tools of analysis of discursive strategies and tactics of the Orthodox sermon. Chapter 3 comprises the study of pragmatic implementations of discursive strategies and tactics in the Orthodox sermon of the XX century, namely the structural, semantic and pragmatic means of realization of the Orthodox sermon's strategic plan. Emphasis on verbal issues in Chapter 4 is designed to analyze verbalization of general and specific discursive strategies and tactics in the Orthodox sermon of the XX century. Ethno-specific characteristics of the strategic potential of the genre of Orthodox sermons in four cultures are outlined.