Communicative and pragmatic principles of homiletics in rhetorical theory

In contemporary linguistic studies of religious communication great importance is attached to the study of preaching. However preaching is often viewed from a narrowly linguistic textual point of view without serious consideration of the views on preaching by pastoral theology and homiletics as its private section devoted directly to preaching. This paper highlights the main genre features of the discursive act of preaching from the perspective of modern linguistic pragmatics certain provisions of discourse theory and rhetoric with consistent reference to the theory and practice of church homiletics. This interdisciplinary analysis provides a new perspective on preaching as a phenomenon of institutional and everyday communication of theocentric communicants and makes this paper novel.