Cultural knowledge as the conceptual basis of the speech genre of religious instruction (based on media discourse)

Abstract

In the modern media environment covering all fields of human endeavour different types of discourse, religious ones with their genres as well, get representation. The speech genre of religious instruction seems to be most widely spread. The genre under discussion is viewed as a part of the primary genre in the religious discourse – preaching which is presupposed to interpret principles of practical usage of religious postulates and rules. In the Internet this genre acquires new characteristics, studying of which is seems relevant due to the researchers’ interest to media communication issues as well as to the society’s growing attention to religion in general. The present research is aimed at studying the ways of actualizing the speech genre of religious instruction, its cultural-conceptual bases, the genre being introduced in Internet publications at the biggest Orthodox websites. The interpretative and notional analysis, the conceptual analysis of discourse and the cultural-semiotic analysis of media texts have been applied as the research methods. The authors have defined cultural knowledge units which realize the main affective function of the speech genre of religious instruction. The cultural meanings and concepts are believed to be key knowledge phenomena organizing the semantic concept of the speech genre of religious instruction. The cultural dominant of the conceptual genre basis is the Holy Scripture text. The components of cultural knowledge are objectified by illustrations of the ways of behavior, appealing to the authority figures’ opinion and biblical texts’ quotations. 

Keywords

• speech genre of religious instruction
• religious discourse
• media discourse
• cultural knowledge
• concept
• cultural meaning
• cultural dominant