Abstract:
Intra-speaker variation can occur in all types of interaction. These variations reveal themselves in
all levels of linguistic features from phonological to discourse and can result from changes in
setting and audience. This research focuses on the ways in which the discourse features of a
Christian minister differ during the sermon at a Sunday morning church service compared with
that of an evening service advertised as “a different kind of worship experience for all ages”
(christchurchnashville.org). Research on sermon features is not new, as many linguists have
looked at the features of African American sermons (Hamlet, 1994; Pitts, 1989; Wharry, 2005).
Additionally, linguists have focused on how speakers manipulate language depending on their
audience (Bell, 1984, Coupland, 1980). However, the link between these two areas has not been
delved into deeply in terms of how sermon style can be used by the same speaker to meet
different goals with different audiences. In this research, I compared the morning and evening
sermons given on the same day by the same speaker. The general findings are that the morning
sermon complies with what is expected of the register and genre in terms of the level of
preparedness, the structure, and the formality. The evening sermon, however, does not seem to
meet the same expectations, as the minister appears to take liberties in terms of the expectations
of the register, the structure, and the level of formality. This suggests that there may be
prototypical examples of a specific register as well as those that still can be categorized within
the register but not conform entirely.
