THE INTERACTION OF COLLOQUIAL AND RELIGIOUS STYLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SERMON

Abstract

The high spiritual potential of religious texts attracts the attention of Ukrainian linguists. Religious style, according to linguists, borrows minimal linguistic elements from other functional types of speech, but in itself is a powerful source of replenishment of the expressive means of other styles. However, the sybstyle of sermon is still influenced by publicistic and conversational speech.
The linguistic analysis of the sermons of the bishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Hryhorii Khomyshyn (1867–1945), collected in the theological work "Parish Mission" (1934), testifies the interaction of the colloquial with the religious style at different levels of speech. This type of connection is caused by the oral form of presentation, emotionally-expressive orientation on a wide range of listeners and the function of influence. Bishop deliberately uses the elements of spoken language, as he writes in the introductory units of his work.
Using folk-spoken lexical and phraseological elements (spoken vocabulary, in particular, emotionally colored, dialecticism, folk phraseology), the preacher makes his speech similar to the language of believers. It becomes simple and clear, is causing trust. The use of colloquial vocabulary can often give expression a humorous or ironic tone. Lexical-phraseological elements of the colloquial style enhance their expressive potential by entering into the contrastive relationship with religiously marked units. Bishop H. Khomyshyn usually uses well-known phraseologisms of folk origin, in particular numerous sayings, through mediation of which informs listeners about important Christian questions. The spoken vocabulary often co-operates with other expressive means: phraseologisms, metaphors, synonyms, antonyms, dialecticisms, and stable phrase combinations are part of artistic means – metaphors, comparisons.
The dialogicity of the sermon manifests itself through appeal to the Christian audience with the help of interrogative sentences that activate the attention of the recipients. Rhetorical question in the sermons of H. Khomyshyn is often the result of the previous thesis. The form of questions instead of prescriptive structures is relevant, because it allows the priest to soften the instructive nature of the sermons. Combination of several interrogative sentences and negative exclamatory sentences-particles are marked with particular expressiveness. Exclamatory sentences of various types convey the emotions of the preacher, enhance the solemnity of speech, draw attention to important Christian issues. The expressiveness of exclamatory sentences is often reinforced by particles and interjections, which is characteristic to colloquial language.