Religious style characteristic. Styles of church and religious speech

Divine services are carried out mainly in Church Slavonic, but Russian is also used - in the genres of sermon, confession, free prayer and some others. Speeches by priests on radio and television; Religious literature is published in Russian.

The Russian language is very widely used for religious purposes. Since the use of language reveals stable stylistic features, there is every reason to distinguish a church-religious functional style, determined by the speech implementation of religion as one of the forms of social consciousness.

Faith is a union between God and man; faith is the presence and action of God in the human soul. A person’s faith becomes truly deep when the word of God becomes his inner property, his word. Faith appears as communication in which the human soul is extremely close to God, and God is extremely close to the human soul.

Religion is based on faith. The main component of a religious worldview is a system of dogmas that is correlated with typical states of the mental life of a believer. Religious truths as value-semantic structures do not require any external, formal-logical proof.

Religious activity, including speech, that embodies faith, is strictly standardized in terms of both its content and the emotional tone of its acts. The norms of this activity largely determine the nature of the spiritual intentions, speech and practical behavior of a believer. Church-religious speech serves as a good illustration of the position of discourse theory that people speak within discursive rules.

Prayerful speech implements a complex of characteristic emotional and psychological states - love, trust, hope, humility, surrendering oneself to the will of God, etc.

These extralinguistic foundations of the church-religious style of speech determine its constructive principle - a special content-semantic and actual speech organization of texts, the purpose of which is to promote the unity of the human soul with God. This principle is implemented by a set of specific stylistic features, the most important of which are:

· Archaic-sublime tonality of speech, corresponding to the high goal of religious activity and serving as a manifestation of the centuries-old tradition of communication with God;

· Symbolization of facts and events invisible world, as well as possible variations in a person’s moral and religious choice;

· Religious values-oriented evaluation of speech;

· Modality of certainty, reliability of what is being reported.

1. It is determined by the sublimity of religious thoughts, feelings, and value systems, which involve the use of linguistic means corresponding to them with their stylistic coloring - primarily Church Slavonicisms. The stylistic coloring of linguistic units traditionally used in worship performs a special function - to maintain in every believer the feeling of his inseparability from the spiritual community of people connected by faith in a series of generations. This tonality serves as a manifestation of the conciliarity of the Christian community.


Examples:loving Father, cleanses from sins, descends from heaven, became a Sacrifice for us.

2. It is based on the fact that spiritual facts that are absolute in their meaning cannot be represented in human communication except with the help of symbols that help to comprehend the content of religious truths. Therefore, church-religious speech is necessarily symbolic. The most important means of expressing this stylistic trait are those tropes and figures of speech that reflect the similarity of phenomena - mainly metaphors, allegories and comparisons.

Examples of metaphorical symbols: What's happened invisible? Invisible– here, next to us, in our soul...; Where ascended Lord? Where is he abides?

Expanded metaphors: And Mary stood at the tomb and cried. A soul that has lost God experiences suffering and sorrow. She is looking for shelter and does not find it. Nothing can replace her communication with the Heavenly Father. And when she cried, she leaned into the coffin.

An important feature of faith is that the assimilation of religious truth means not only and not so much a rational, but an intuitive-emotional comprehension of it, “acceptance by heart.” Therefore in religious speech when symbolizing phenomena spiritual world comparisons are widely used, referring a person to his moral, religious and everyday experience.

Symbolization manifests itself in the specificity of the church-religious style of speech, not just as a formal way of indirectly expressing meanings, but as a necessary structural feature of religious activity, consisting in the symbolic expression of Divine truths for their assimilation by people. Metaphors, allegories, comparisons create the originality of the church-religious style precisely by their semantic relevance to the spiritual world, their involvement in activities aimed at bringing the human soul closer to God.

3. It is determined by the very motivation of religious activity - to transform the sinful earthly order of life, all everyday relationships into the image of heavenly ones - saints, perfect ones. At the same time, a believer must strive to cleanse his soul from sin and develop virtues in it. Hence the negative self-evaluation in the confessional speech, imbued with a feeling of repentance, and, on the other hand, the positive evaluation of the speech glorifying God and the saints.

4. Faith presupposes a person’s conviction in the existence of a Higher Principle and in the truth of its revelation. The marker of conviction that Divine teaching is absolutely true is “amen.” Linguistic means of expression - factive verbs (know, remember, believe, trust), introductory words with the meaning of confidence, nouns: true, true.

Language means. Preservation of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of vowels complete education in unstressed positions, the stressed e is occasionally pronounced after soft consonants, hissing and c before hard consonants, the voicedness of paired consonants is pronounced at the end of the word.

Lexical Church Slavonicisms: good, temple, oblivion, find.

In the field of morphemics– Old Slavonic prefixes and suffixes: most holy, most pure, most merciful, know, redeem, creator, patron, comforter, sower.

Syntactic biblical words: inversions in phrases with agreement: the Holy Spirit, the word of God, the sea of ​​life.

30. Figures of speech formed by lexical means.

Figures of speech associated with the word:

- Epithet

- Pun

-Gradation– arrangement of synonyms in ascending or descending order of a feature, semantic component. (“...and these people strive to leave behind, to spit on, to dirty, to spoil, so you rub, scrape, lick, you see, yesterday I broke a nail” (M. Shishkin “The Capture of Ishmael”). A series of stylistic synonyms that are located along the ascending line of one semantic component. Other terms: Climax (increase in significance) – anti-climax (loss of significance).

- Paronomasia- using a word next to another that sounds similar to it ( And there is no creator in creation; Love love).

- Antithesis– 2 words that carry opposite meanings are syntagmatically juxtaposed:

You're miserable too

You are also abundant

You are mighty

You and the powerless

Mother Rus'. (N.A.Nekrasov)

- Pleonasm– redundancy – doubling of meaning, which is created by placing into a separate word a semantic component already contained in the neighboring word. This means is expressive if there is an intention to update some semantic component, otherwise it is an error.

The existence of a religious style - a variety of modern Russian literary language functioning in the sphere of religion - was recognized quite recently - at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This state of affairs is due, first of all, to the fact that, due to extra-linguistic reasons, modern Orthodox spiritual speech remained outside the boundaries for a long time. scientific study. In Russian linguistics and literary criticism, researchers turned mainly to the analysis of classical examples of Russian church preaching speech of the Middle Ages.

The phenomenon of modern spiritual speech is that it contains texts in Church Slavonic (Holy Scripture, prayers, psalms) and speech works in modern Russian literary language (epistles of church hierarchs, liturgical sermons with which the pastor addresses parishioners, as well as called secular spiritual speech, which sounds outside the temple). This circumstance allows researchers to state the presence of bilingualism within the sphere of religious communication, which, in turn, necessitates the need to resolve issues related to determining the real status of the Church Slavonic language in relation to the modern Russian literary language, on the one hand, and with clarifying the stylistic system of the Russian literary language - on the other [Prokhvatilova 2006: 19].

The idea of ​​the need to highlight and describe the religious-preaching style as one of the functional styles of the Russian literary language belongs to L.P. Krysin, who in the mid-90s of the twentieth century, in one of his works, outlined the problem of identifying the genre diversity and linguistic characteristics of spiritual speech and outlined its stylistic features. In subsequent years, this idea was supported by leading Russian scientists and work began on studying the stylistic variety of language functioning in the sphere of religion.

To date, there are descriptions of some genre varieties of modern spiritual speech (sermons, prayers, church messages), its main stylistic parameters have been outlined, many of which require clarification and addition.

Modern approaches to the study of functional varieties of a literary language involve the disclosure of both extra-linguistic properties of style and those linguistic elements and categories that make up its stylistic “content”. This paragraph offers a description of the extralinguistic qualities and linguistic features of the religious style - a type of modern Russian literary language that functions in the sphere of religion along with the Church Slavonic language.

O.A. Prokhvatilova gives preference to the name religious style, since it indicates the most important, basic criterion that underlies modern classifications of styles, the sphere of use of the type of language functioning. As for other terms that are used to describe this style, religious-preaching and church-religious, in the first of them, according to the fair remark of O.A. Krylova, contains a limitation of the implementation of the style by the genre of sermon, and in the second, from the point of view of O.A. Prokhvatilova, there is a hidden tautology (cf.: church “associated with the church, with religion, with worship”; church “a religious organization of clergy and believers, united by a community of beliefs and rituals”) [Prokhvatilova 2006: 20].

According to Prokhvatilova, the most important extralinguistic features of a religious style, which determine the systematic nature of its linguistic characteristics, are:

A set of types of communication relevant for the religious sphere of communication, collective, mass and personal communications, as well as a special type of hypercommunication;

A specific type of “speaker-listener” relationship in religious communication;

The dialogical nature inherent in a monologue religious text;

A combination of the functions of message and influence, in which the educational and didactic orientation of religious texts is realized;

A stylistic dominant, which is a synthesis in religious texts of elements of two language systems of the Russian Old Church Slavonic and modern Russian languages ​​[Prokhvatilova 2006: 20].

As is known, the type of communication is one of the most important features that determine the content and formal properties of a speech work. The nuclear genres of the religious style, primarily the temple sermon, are characterized by belonging to the sphere of collective communication, since a pastoral sermon is a public speech addressed to a collective addressee - believers gathered for worship. There is also reason to assert that spiritual preaching, along with the church message, also exists in the conditions of mass communication, since modern technical means enable today’s church hierarchs and preachers to significantly expand their audience with the help of radio, television and print media. In addition to collective and mass communication, personal communication is possible in religious communication (for example, in confession).

Religious texts are also implemented in hypercommunication. This is a specific type of verbal communication, which is relevant only for religious communication and occurs when reading prayers and Holy Scripture or quoting them in a spiritual sermon, church message or in texts of other genres of religious style. Hypercommunication is characterized by the special status of the addressee and the transformation of the language code associated with the specific perception of sacred texts, the sacred Word as the embodiment of the Divine essence of the Savior. In terms of semiotics, such an attitude towards a linguistic sign is defined as its non-conventional interpretation, in which the sign is interpreted not as “ symbol some denotation, but as the denotation itself or its component.” In terms of form, hypercommunication is manifested in the asemantic nature of the intonation design of speech, which is realized in the rhythmization of the sound of spiritual texts, as well as in the intonational lack of expression of the syntactic structure of the utterance, syntactic connections between its parts [Mechkovskaya 1996: 73].

The extralinguistic parameters of a religious style determine its linguistic characteristics, the description of which involves determining the internal organization of the functional type of speech, that is, a set of linguistic units that are united by a common task, the goals of speech communication.

The system of linguistic means of spiritual speech is permeated with archaic components of all levels, which, in combination with units of the modern Russian literary language, create its stylistic originality.

“At the phonetic level, the specificity of the sound of modern spiritual speech is determined by a unique combination of acoustic features that reflect the features of the ancient musical-tonic and modern accent-melodic phonetic systems. Thus, despite the dominance of modern orthoepy, there is an inconsistent reproduction of pronunciation properties that go back to the traditions of Old Church Slavonic pronunciation” [Prokhvatilova 2006: 21].

“The specifics of the lexical system of a religious style can be characterized in terms of the semantics of its constituent elements, the stylistic coloring of the units included in it, as well as the historical perspective of words used in religious texts” [Prokhvatilova 2006: 22].

“The morphological structure of the religious style is of a nominal nature: per 1,000 words in a religious text there are 304 nouns and only 131 verbs. Meanwhile, the specificity of the morphological structure of the religious style is determined by the peculiarities of the functioning of verbal forms” [Prokhvatilova 2006: 22].

“One of the stylistic markers of a religious text should include the present of a theological generalization, which is usually used to designate a speech action that occurred in the past and does not coincide with the moment of speech. The special significance of the forms of this theological generalization actualizes the traditional idea for the sphere of religion about the events of Sacred history - the Old and New Testaments - as enduring phenomena, standing outside of time, since with the help of such forms in religious texts (sermons, messages) statements of high spiritual authorities and hierarchs are introduced Orthodoxy and Christianity, which allows us to give them a generally “eternal” meaning, to enhance the modernity and relevance of the content of the reproduced speech” [Prokhvatilova 2006: 23].

“The syntactic features of the religious style are associated with the predominant use of complete two-part common sentences, imperative constructions, high frequency of elements of emotional syntax: interrogative sentences; exclamatory sentences, syntactic repetitions. Syntactic repetitions are often concentrated in rhetorically strong positions of a religious text (introduction and conclusion), and can also act as signals of transition from one compositional part of the text to another, performing a text-forming function” [Prokhvatilova 2006: 24].

“The proposed description of general stylistic features and specific linguistic means that are reflected in texts operating in the field of religious communication is certainly not exhaustive. However, it allows us to see that the religious style represents a special subsystem of the modern Russian literary language, in which the unity of the linguistic and extralinguistic is revealed” [Prokhvatilova 2006: 24].

Church-religious style

- a functional variety of modern rus. lit. language serving the sphere of church and religious social activities and correlated with the religious form of social consciousness.

In pre-perestroika times (1917–1980s), this area of ​​Russian functioning. language, due to well-known extralinguistic reasons, was practically closed to the philologist-researcher, which resulted in the absence of an indication of the Ts.-r. style in the literature on stylistics, as well as the widespread opinion that this area is served not by modern Russian, but by the Church Slavonic language. Currently, the sphere of church-religious public activity is expanding its boundaries. Communication in this area includes, on the one hand, the pronunciation of various canonical liturgical texts, the reproduction of prayers and chants, where the Church Slavonic language is actually presented, and on the other hand, speeches by clergy to a mass audience on the radio, at rallies, on television, in the State Duma, during the rite of consecration of schools, hospitals, offices, etc., carried out not in Church Slavonic, but in modern. rus. lit. language, which appears in this case in the form of a special function. style - church-religious(in other terminology - religious, religious and preaching or religious-cult; term church-religious preferable because indicates simultaneously the sphere of social activity in which it functions, the religious form of public consciousness, and church leaders as authors of the relevant texts, but does not limit its implementation only to the genre of sermon). Thus, the sphere of church-religious social activity turns out to be the sphere bilingualism.

But if the Church Slavonic language has been studied and described in detail, then the study of Ts.-r. functional With. modern rus. lit. language is just beginning; there are descriptions of the genres of church-religious messages and temple sermons; you will have to study the genres of parting words, funeral words, etc. words, the speech of clergy in an official setting - i.e. all genres and forms of speech in which the C.-R. is embodied. functional With.

Systematicity C.-r. With. reflected in such parameters of the corresponding speech genres as: a) content side; b) communicative goal; c) the image of the author; d) the nature of the addressee; e) the system of linguistic means and features of their organization.

Content texts published in the Ts.-r. p., allows us to distinguish two sides in it: the dictum (eventual) content specified by the topic, and the modal frame of the dictum content formed by congratulations, appeals, religious instructions, advice, praise of the activities of the Church, etc.: "Addressing you with Easter greetings, I urge you to successfully continue serving the Church and the Fatherland in boundless devotion to Christ, in fidelity to His commandments and love for every person and everything to the human race" (Easter message of Alexy II, 1988). These two substantive aspects of the Central Revolution. texts are correlated - respectively - with content-factual and content-conceptual information (according to I.R. Galperin). A specific feature of content-conceptual information (or the modal frame of the content side) is its explicit character; it reflects religious ideology and does not allow any other interpretations.

Communication goal texts of the Ts.-r. With. Always complex, multifaceted: by revealing the dictum content, the author simultaneously strives to emotional impact on the addressee, and this emotional impact is associated with a certain event from biblical history, from the life of the apostles, saints, Church leaders, etc., recalling which, the author strives to religious education audience; marking the most important events in the modern church and - more broadly - public life, the author achieves another goal - promoting the positive role of the Church in life modern society and, finally, calling for the observance of Christian commandments, for the preservation of religious traditions, for the observance of church institutions, the author pursues the goal education religious audience. Thus, the combination of emotionally impacting, religious-educational, religious-propaganda and educational-didactic goals realizes the multilateral communicative orientation of the C.-R. texts.

A complex communicative goal forms and , which in Ts.-r. With. it turns out also complex, two-dimensional: on the one hand, this is a spiritual shepherd, a mentor of the laity, and on the other, one of "child of the Mother Church" experiencing feelings of joy, jubilation or, conversely, feelings of regret or sorrow along with those listening; This variation in the image of the author is reflected, in particular, in the variation of the linguistic form denoting the narrator ( I copyright / We copyright / We inclusive): "With a joyful, bright feeling I I address you with words of peace and love about Christ..."; " We visited the Alma-Ata diocese in Kazakhstan..."; "And We, children of God, let us rejoice now... and let us proceed to Bethlehem"(Christmas message of Alexy II, 1995–1996). The image of the author as an intermediary between the Church - “the vicar of God on Earth” - and the believers, the people, and the intermediary who understands the people and is close to them, determines the absence of an explicit author’s expression of will in the form of a categorical order: the obligatory prescriptive nature of the presentation in the form of a categorical imperative C. -R. With. not typical: "We want our believers not to be limited to meeting people only through means mass media about how the celebration will take place in the Holy Land or our capital, Moscow, and that they personally take part in the Great Jubilee in their church community, in their hometown, district or village"(Christmas message of Metropolitan Juvenaly, 1998–1999). Even in a situation where the author expresses the negative attitude of the entire patriarchy to an event (for example, to the television showing of Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ”), he resorts not to the speech genres of an order or a categorical prohibition, but to the speech genres of request and advice: “This film / which they want to show on TV... / it’s not good... They show sheer blasphemy... // Moreover, it’s all mixed / for us with the dear Holy Scripture / and Tradition / about our Lord Jesus Christ // Therefore, please / take this into account seriously"(from a temple sermon - example of N.N. Rozanova).

Destination texts of the Ts.-r. With. - these are, on the one hand, Orthodox Christians, if the text is heard in church and addressed to believers, or a wider audience, if the text is addressed, for example, to listeners of radio broadcasts, television viewers, etc., i.e. generalized and mass addressee(according to N.I. Formanovskaya). In the case of a clergyman’s address to other church figures of various ranks, the addressee predictable and specific. But always texts written in Ts.-r. p., addressed to a mass audience, therefore, represent public official speech , and therefore Ts.-r. With. is book function style of codified lit. language .

Language system C.-r. With. includes lexical units of four layers : 1) neutral, interstyle vocabulary ( help, talk, do, everyone, then, Moscow); 2) general book ( perception, being, original role, traditions, however, very much, adhere to other worldviews); 3) church-religious ( Lord Almighty, monks and nuns, monastics, laity, patronal feast day, divine service, kingdom of God, hierarchs, God-loving shepherds, Holy Land, consecration, myrrh-bearing women); 4) vocabulary with newspaper and journalistic functional and stylistic coloring ( sovereign states, militants, education, overcoming difficulties, economic and social situation, problems of refugees and regions). The main lexical resource of the style is vocabulary that is emotionally expressive, in particular archaic-sublime and emotionally evaluative ( unparalleled devotion, exalt warriors, unearthly greatness, draw inspiration, glorious holiday), the use of which is associated with the implementation of those communicative goals discussed above: with an educational and didactic goal and the goal of a positive emotional impact aimed at developing certain moral concepts in the addressee. Grammar Resources style include such morphological and syntactic means that provide: 1) book the nature of the style (in particular, the genitive subsubstantive, participles and participial phrases, passive constructions); 2) archaic stylistic coloring of speech (archaic morphological forms, outdated control, inversion of the agreed component in the phrase); 3) creation expressive effect(series of homogeneous members, superlatives); eg: 1) summer of the goodness of the Lord; words of peace and love; communication that pleases the heart; the Cathedral of Christ the Savior being restored in Moscow; 2) with love in Christ; it will be blotted out; now born; beloved in the Lord; on the ground; to the heavenly world; keep the fatherly faith; Church of Heaven; 3) ... I congratulate you, my dears, on this bright and blessed holiday; most important; abundant; glorious; multi-useful; most joyful; most honest; most blessed. From a negative point of view, the arsenal of grammatical means of style is characterized by the absence of multicomponent complex sentences with heterogeneous syntactic connections, a non-union way of expressing subordinating relations, which is associated with the desire for accessibility and understandability of the C.-r. texts to a mass addressee.

Purposes increased expression and, in particular, the creation of an emotional and evaluative stylistic coloring of speech, serve, in addition to the use of evaluative and emotionally expressive vocabulary: a) extensive quotation; b) the use of tropes and figures of speech (the most typical of which are metaphors, epithets, repetitions, gradation, antithesis, inversion, rhetorical question); c) techniques for complicating the composition of texts; eg: “We are sinners and unclean // And She (the Mother of God) / Most Pure”(antithesis); “And really / to whom and when did God refuse the grace / of enlightenment / Which Christian / cannot receive / wisdom from God?”(a rhetorical question); (examples from N.N. Rozanova).

In general, from the point of view of linguistic embodiment, the studied genres of C.-r. With. differ a combination of general book elements with church-religious and newspaper-journalistic elements , and archaic-solemn and emotional-evaluative coloring , What distinguishes Ts.-r. With. from all other book functions. styles, including those from newspaper and journalistic , with which he comes close due to the complexity of the communicative function, the mass nature of the addressee and the emotional and expressive coloring of many linguistic means included in his system. However, these signs, as well as the different direction of influence, the nature of the author’s image, the lack of that openness to stylistically reduced, pejorative-evaluative and even non-literary elements, which is characteristic of newspaper-publics. style - all this does not allow us to consider the Ts.-r. With. "variety" or "substyle" of newspaper-publics. functional modern style rus. lit. language.

Lit.: Krysin L.P. Religious-preaching style and its place in the functional-stylistic paradigm of the modern Russian literary language // Poetics. Stylistics. Language and culture / In memory of T.G. Distiller. – M., 1996; Shmelev A.D. Functional stylistics and moral concepts // Language. Culture. Humanitarian knowledge. Scientific heritage of G.O. Vinokura and modernity. – M., 1999; Krylova O.A. Is there a church-religious functional style in the modern Russian literary language? // Cultural and speech situation in modern Russia. – Ekaterinburg, 2000; Her same: Can the church-religious style of the modern Russian literary language be considered a type of newspaper-journalistic style? // Stereotyping and creativity in the text. – Perm, 2001; Seo Eun Young, Speech genre of modern church and religious message.: Author's abstract. dis....cand. Philol. Sci. – M., 2000; Rozanova N.N. Communicative-genre features of temple sermon // I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay: Scientist. Teacher. Personality / Edited by T.M. Grigorieva. – Krasnoyarsk, 2000.

Kozhina M.N. To the foundations of functional stylistics. – Perm, 1968 (see pp. 160–175); Theodosius Bishop of Polotsk and Glubokoe. Homiletics. Theory of church preaching, Moscow. Spirits. Academy. – Sergiev Posad, 1999; Wojtak M. Individual implementation of a genre sample of a sermon // Stereotyping and creativity in the text. – Perm, 2002; Makuchowska M. Język religijny // Język polski / Ed. St. Gajda. – Opole, 2001.

O.A. Krylova


Stylistic encyclopedic Dictionary Russian language. - M:. "Flint", "Science". Edited by M.N. Kozhina. 2003 .

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Among the functional varieties of the modern Russian language, the religious style should also be highlighted. As is known, in the Russian Orthodox Church, services are carried out mainly in the Church Slavonic language, but the Russian language is also used - in the genres of sermon, confession, free prayer and some others. IN last years Russian religious speech can also be heard outside the church - in speeches by priests on radio and television, and not only in religious programs, but also in secular reports dedicated to significant events in public life (for example, during the consecration of new schools, hospitals); Popular religious literature is published in Russian. Therefore, we can say that the modern Russian literary language is very widely used for religious purposes. Since, as we see, its use reveals stable stylistic features determined by the sphere of communication and the specifics of faith, there is every reason to distinguish among the speech varieties of the Russian literary language a church-religious functional style, determined by the speech realization of religion as one of the forms of social consciousness.

Considering faith and religion as the extralinguistic basis of this style, we must interpret them from the standpoint of not atheistic, but religious consciousness, since it is the latter that is embodied in religious texts, defining their specific style features.

According to the teachings of the church, faith is a union between God and man. In another formulation, identical in essence to this one, faith is “the presence and action of God in the human soul” (Handbook of a clergyman. Pastorskoe theology. M., 1988. Vol. 8. P. 165). The highest dignity of a person is that he is the image and likeness of God (that is, endowed with the ability to creatively transform the world). God has invested in man a sense of truth, and it is recognized through the religious experience of the soul as something close, dear, long forgotten, as its Prototype.

A person’s faith becomes truly deep when the word of God becomes his inner property, his word. In other words, a person, perceiving the word of Divine revelation, agrees with it, accepts it and realizes it as his highest value. Faith therefore appears as communication in which the human soul is extremely close to God, and God is extremely close to the human soul. At the same time, unity with God is impossible without unity with other people. Therefore, an essential feature of the Christian faith is conciliarity - the spiritual community of many people united by love for the same absolute values.

Religion is based on faith. The content of religion as a form of social consciousness consists of images, thoughts, emotions, affective-cognitive orientations, values, and norms. The main component of a religious worldview is a system of dogmas (the most important religious truths), correlated with the typical states of the mental life of a believer. In the Christian religion, such states are the experience of love, reverence, awe, a sense of “rank,” one’s own imperfection, and some others. It is important to note that religious truths, as value-semantic structures that meet the deep spiritual needs of a believer and are experienced by him, do not need any external, formal-logical evidence.

Religious activity, including speech, that embodies faith, is strictly standardized in terms of both its content and the emotional tone of its acts. The norms of this activity largely determine the nature of the spiritual intentions, speech and practical behavior of a believer. We can say that church-religious speech serves as a good illustration of the position of discourse theory that people speak “within discursive rules” (M. Foucault). Even in free prayer a person who has achieved high level spirituality, strictly follows the recommendation: “Let it be in your mind and heart to completely unite your will with the will of God and obey it in everything and not at all desire to bend the will of God to your will...” (On the reference book clergyman. Thematic material for sermons. T. 6. M, 1988. P. 397). Examples:

Lord, save me, for I am perishing. Guide me on the path of truth, goodness and righteousness, and strengthen me on this path, and deliver me, Lord, from temptations. And if You want to send me temptations, confirm and strengthen my weak strength in the fight against them, so that I do not fall under the weight of them and perish for Your kingdom, prepared for those who love You from the creation of the world.

Lord, You show us endless mercy and love. You await our repentance and correction with great patience. Teach me from the heart to forgive now everyone who has ever insulted and offended me. For you, Lord, leave debts only to those who themselves know how to leave their debtors. - Archpriest Artemy Vladimirov.

It is not difficult to notice that the content of prayer requests is determined by religious teaching: these are requests for Divine help in fulfilling Christian commandments (Lead me on the path of truth, goodness and righteousness... Teach me from the heart to forgive now everyone who has ever offended and offended me.) In this case, prayer speech implements a complex of characteristic emotional and psychological states - love, trust, hope, humility, surrendering oneself to the will of God, etc.

Stylistic features of church and religious speech

The considered extralinguistic foundations of the church-religious style of speech determine its constructive principle - a special content-semantic and actual speech organization of texts, the purpose of which is to promote the unity of the human soul with God. This principle is implemented by a set of specific stylistic features, the most important of which are:

  • - archaic-sublime tonality of speech, corresponding to the high goal of religious activity and serving as a manifestation of the centuries-old tradition of communication with God;
  • - symbolization of facts and events of the invisible world, as well as possible options for a person’s moral and religious choice;
  • - evaluation of speech oriented towards religious values;
  • - modality of certainty, reliability of what is being reported.

The first of the named style features is archaic-sublime tone of speech- is determined by the sublimity of religious thoughts, feelings, and value systems, which presuppose the use of linguistic means corresponding to them with their stylistic coloring - primarily Church Slavonicisms. These are not only multi-level linguistic units, but also so-called communicative fragments, i.e. “ready-to-use pieces of linguistic material” (B.M. Gasparov): a loving Father, who will cleanse us from sins, for our salvation, the miracle of God’s creation, descends from heaven, the path of temptation and trials, became a Sacrifice for us, etc. This kind of linguistic and speech units accumulate centuries-old experience of religious communication; they are “populated by the voices” of previous generations of believers (our “brothers and sisters”) - voices expressing the same feeling of love for God and neighbors that a believer experiences when uttering prayer or “heart” perceiving the sermon. Therefore, the stylistic coloring of linguistic units traditionally used in worship (coloring enhanced by a special timbre, intonation, rhythm of speech and forming a single complex of communicative means with church music and painting) performs a special function - to maintain in every believer the feeling of his inseparability from the spiritual community of people bound by faith across generations. In other words, this tonality, corresponding to sublime religious thoughts and feelings, also serves as a manifestation of the conciliarity of the Christian community.

The well-known Russian theorist of Amphitheater preaching convincingly wrote about the importance of using sublimely archaized Church Slavonic means in religious communication and the unjustification of using linguistic units here that evoke associations of a non-religious nature, especially words with reduced connotations: what would happen, he asked, “if we, imitating secular language, instead of “Lord Jesus” they would say “Mr. Jesus”, instead of “brothers” - “brothers”, instead of “baptism” - “bathing”, instead of “sacrament” - “secret”, instead of “miracle” - “curiosity” " and so on." (Quoted from the book: Archbishop Averky (Taushev). Guide to homiletics. M., 2001. P. 85).

The second of the named style features is symbolization of events of the invisible world- is based on the fact that spiritual facts that are absolute in their meaning cannot be represented in human communication except with the help of symbols that help, as far as possible, to comprehend the content of religious truths. Therefore, church-religious speech is necessarily symbolic. The most important means of expressing this stylistic trait are those tropes and figures of speech that reflect the similarity of phenomena - mainly metaphors, allegories and comparisons.

Consider the statement: Since then the trial of the world began. The metaphorical nature of the word “court” helps to understand - at least in the most general outline- the truth about punishment from God for the sins of people. Its in-depth interpretation is given in a broader context, using new symbols:

God is not like an earthly judge; he does not judge or condemn us inhumanly, following the letter of the law. No, God's love comes to us, comes to the entire human race and to each of us. And then something happens to us... God's Love... suddenly falls into the dirt and cold of the dumb soul, and then an explosion occurs. Not because God has rage or anger, only man has this, but because the pure and the unclean met... - and a storm occurs.- Sermon by Archpriest Alexander Men.

Here are some more examples of metaphorical symbols:

What is the invisible? The invisible is here, next to us, in our soul...; Where has the Lord ascended? Where is He? Of course, not in the sky that our eyes see and which stretches above our heads...; You hear the word “redemption” a lot. What does it mean? Literally it means “ransom”, “liberation”, “acquisition for oneself”. With this word we convey the meaning of the mysterious action of God, by which the Lord frees us, sinners and weak ones, from the power of Satan...- Archpriest Alexander Men; ...the cross and suffering are the lot of the elect, these are the narrow gates through which they enter the Kingdom of Heaven.- Archimandrite John (Peasant).

In the religious-symbolic function, in addition to metaphors themselves, allegories are widely used - a type of expanded (text) metaphors that express abstract content with the help of specific ideas. In the fragment of the sermon given below, the priest interprets the symbolic meaning of the Gospel story about Mary Magdalene mourning Jesus Christ:

And Mary stood at the tomb and cried. A soul that has lost God experiences suffering and sorrow. She is looking for shelter and does not find it. Nothing can replace her communication with the Heavenly Father.

And when she cried, she leaned into the coffin... If the soul is alive and wants to understand the meaning of its existence, then, reflecting, it will certainly come to the problem of death, which is inexorably approaching with every passing day. The immortal human spirit is unable to come to terms with death. If at the end of life there is non-existence, then why be?

...And he sees two Angels, in white robes, sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus lay. From death, a person’s thought inevitably turns to the invisible world. And a person meets witnesses of the spiritual world: churches, icons, church singing...- Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov.

As is known, in the Gospel parables, which are allegorical texts, the religious and moral positions of people are presented in a symbolic form, along with the events of the invisible world. Indicative in this regard is a fragment from the parable “About the Prodigal Son” and the preacher’s commentary on it:

His eldest son was in the field and, returning, when he approached the house, he heard singing and rejoicing.

And calling one of the servants, he asked: what is this?

He said to him: Your brother has come; and your father killed the fatted calf, because he received it healthy.

He became angry and did not want to enter. His father came out and called him.

But he answered his father: Behold, I have served you for many years and have never violated your orders; but you never gave me even a kid so that I could have fun with my friends.

And when this son of yours, who had wasted his wealth with harlots, came, you killed the fatted calf for him.

He said to him: My son! You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

And it was necessary to rejoice and be glad that this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; lost and is found.

First of all, this parable is about our Heavenly Father. When we say: “I will not be saved, I am not fit, I am not fit, there is no hope,” let us remember that there is One who is waiting for us, because we are all His children.

This is also a parable about self-righteous people... Look at this eldest son. He is always with his father, but how different he is from him. Doesn't look like him at all! Because he has no love, no good attitude towards his brother, and even towards his father. An envious, smug man.- Archpriest Alexander Men.

An important feature of faith is special type cognitive communicative activity is that the assimilation of religious truth means not only and not so much rational as its intuitive-emotional comprehension, “acceptance by the heart.” Therefore, in religious speech, when symbolizing phenomena of the spiritual world, comparisons are widely used, referring a person to his moral, religious and everyday experience.

The passage below compares the humble love of Jesus Christ with a mother's willingness to serve her infant in the most humiliating ways. This comparison makes accessible the religious truth about the kenotic love of Jesus Christ, helps to “feel” it, thereby establishing contact between the Gospel word and the human soul:

Expressed in the forms of Scripture, we can say that God is humility. And a humble God is characterized by humble love, and not from above... God, who created everything that exists with His word, became incarnate and lived, humiliating Himself to limits inaccessible to us. It's there characteristic the love of God: it is self-exhausting, kenotic - so the Lord, so that they would accept His word, before His crucifixion on Calvary, washed the feet of the apostles and said: “I have given you an example so that you should do the same as I did to you.”

In human love there is a love that, somewhat more than all other human manifestations, approaches this type of kenotic love - this is the love of a mother: she endures everything from her baby; she is ready for all humiliating forms of service to her baby - this is the kenotic love of a mother. And the fathers do the same, but in different forms. This is more clearly expressed in the position that the child’s mother assumes.- Archimandrite Sophrony.

It must be emphasized that symbolization reveals the specificity of the church-religious style of speech not just as a formal way of indirectly expressing meanings (this method is also used in other areas of communication, including in the artistic, political and ideological spheres), but as a necessary structural feature of religious activity, consisting in the sign-symbolic expression of Divine truths for their assimilation by people. In turn, metaphors, allegories, comparisons used in the symbolic function create the originality of the church-religious style precisely by their semantic relevance to the spiritual world, their involvement in activities aimed at bringing the human soul closer to God.

Organically connected with the basic extralinguistic factors of the functional style under consideration is such a feature as evaluation of speech based on Christian values. Indeed, it is determined by the very motivation of religious activity - to transform the sinful earthly order of life, all everyday relationships according to the model of heavenly ones - saints, perfect ones. At the same time, a believer must strive to cleanse his soul from sin and develop in it virtues that are a reflection of Divine perfections

Hence, on the one hand, a negative self-esteem imbued with a feeling of repentance in confessional, including prayer, speech (example 1), as well as a sharply negative assessment of forces hostile to God (example 2), on the other hand, a positive assessment of speech glorifying God and the saints ( example 3):

(1) Lord, my Lord! I am a bottomless abyss of sin: wherever I look into myself - everything is bad, whatever I remember - everything is done wrong, said incorrectly, badly thought out... And the intentions and dispositions of my soul are one insult to You, my Creator, Benefactor!- O. Boris Nikolaevsky; We, many sinners, confess to the Lord God Almighty... and to you, honorable father, all our sins, voluntary and involuntary... We sinned by being unmerciful towards the poor, had no compassion for the sick and crippled; They have sinned through stinginess, greed, wastefulness, greed, infidelity, injustice, and hardness of heart.- The rite of general confession, compiled by Archbishop Sergius (Golubtsov).
(2) ...demons don't have claws. They are depicted with hooves, claws, horns, and tails because it is impossible for the human imagination to imagine anything more vile than this species. This is what they are in their vileness, for their willful falling away from God and their voluntary resistance to the Divine grace of the Angels of Light, as they were before falling away, made them angels of such darkness and abomination that they cannot be depicted in any human likeness.- Archimandrite John (Krestiankin);
(3)He [God] is light without any darkness according to His divine mind, as omniscient, knowing everything that exists completely truly and perfectly to the smallest detail. He is light and purity according to His divine will, as the all-holy, abhorring everything unclean and loving only the holy and pure. From Him emanates the light of rationality, truth, virtue and holiness. .

Detailed evaluative descriptions of the most important Christian virtues and basic human vices, reproofs and exhortations are widely represented in religious texts.

The nature of faith is also determined modality of certainty, reliability of speech. In fact, faith presupposes a person’s conviction in the existence of a Supreme Principle (God) and in the truth of His revelation. According to church doctrine, a secular speaker, including a scientist, can make mistakes, since he proceeds from personal convictions, while in church-religious texts the Divine teaching is embodied, which is absolutely true. A characteristic marker of this conviction is the particle amen at the end of a sermon or prayer - “truly, truly.”

The most active linguistic means of expressing confidence in the truth of what is being communicated are the so-called factive verbs (know, remember, believe, believe etc.), introductory words with the meaning of confidence, nouns truth, truth and derivative words true, truly, truly, truly: ...You and I are called Christians because we know: God most clearly revealed himself to man in the face of Christ; We know that the word of the Lord is true; ...we believe that the rock of the Church is unshakable; The apostle expressed this sad truth with the words...; God did not create death, and, of course, sin could not come from the One who is the highest Good.- Archpriest Alexander Men.

References to the highest authority of Holy Scripture, to the testimonies of the Holy Fathers of the Church, have convincing power for the consciousness of a believer. This explains the widespread use of constructions of other people’s speech (direct and indirect):

The Word of God of the Old and New Testaments speaks convincingly that at the end of the world there will be a general resurrection of the dead; The Word of God tells us truthfully:<…>; The Lord Himself in the Holy Gospel repeatedly assures us of the existence of a future afterlife: Truly, truly, I say to you: the time is coming, and has already come, when the dead will hear the Voice of the Son of God.- Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov).

Narratives of supernatural events (miracles) often found in religious texts are also an expression of faith as a belief in the existence of Divine powers that does not require proof. It is characteristic that in many cases the priest speaks of miracles as facts attested in church history - indicating proper names and dates:

...having learned from relatives that there was indeed an icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” in the Church of the Transfiguration on Ordynka, she called a priest with it to her home and after performing a prayer service with the blessing of water, she received healing. In memory of this miracle, the first miracle from the icon “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” a holiday was established in her honor on October 24 (November 6). And currently this miraculous image is in the temple on Ordynka.- Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov).

Linguistic means of church-religious style

From the previous presentation it is clear that the specifics of faith determine the most important features of the church-religious style of speech, created by the natural selection and use of linguistic means. Let's take a closer look at these tools.

As noted, multi-level linguistic units regularly used in Russian religious speech are characterized by a special archaic-sublime functional coloring, which can be called ecclesiastical. The fund of these units (and the rules for their implementation) is represented primarily by borrowings from the Old Church Slavonic language.

Thus, at the phonetic level, along with modern Russian pronunciation norms, Church Slavonic norms operate (Prokhvatilova O.A. Orthodox sermon and prayer as a phenomenon of modern sounding speech. Volgograd, 1999): the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of fully formed vowels in unstressed positions are often preserved (God; b[o]g[o]pleas[o]; [o]n[o]sent); the stressed [e] is occasionally pronounced after soft consonants, hissing and [ts] before hard consonants (sanctified [sh:’e]nnoy; pri[n’es]; ko[p’ijem]); in some cases, the voicedness of paired consonants is noted at the end of the word (commandment[d’]).

Lexical Church Slavonicisms are especially widely used: good, temple, oblivion, gain, humble, hope and etc.

In the field of morphemics, Old Slavonic prefixes and suffixes are characteristic: most holy, most pure, most merciful, experience, expel, redeem, creator, patron, comforter, sower, intercession, boldness, service, humility and the like.

Speaking about methods of word formation, it should be noted that in church-religious speech, word composition is represented much more widely than in other speech spheres ( beneficence, long-suffering, mercy, hymn, love of mankind, God-fearing, miraculous etc.) and substantivization ( feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, teach the ignorant, give to your neighbor etc.).

Morphological Old Church Slavonic means are occasionally used, giving the expression the color of church speech, in particular the forms of the vocative case of nouns: lord, father, Mother of God, genitive case singular masculine adjectives and participles: holy A hey, honest A oh, enlightened A th and etc.

Syntactic biblicalisms also have the indicated connotation - inversions in phrases with agreement: Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit, word of God, king of the Jews, human race, sea of ​​life etc.

Of course, an archaic sublime coloring is also inherent in many units of non-Old Slavic origin, which also form a fund of actively used means of church-religious communication, for example words dare, meek, vow, murmur, passion, blasphemy etc. In the creation and expression of this coloring, the role of means of expressive syntax, including stringing of similar constructions, is significant (See: Krysin L.P. Religious-preaching style and its place in the functional-stylistic paradigm of the Russian literary language // Poetics. Stylistics .Language and culture. In memory of T. G. Vinokur. M., 1996).

It must be borne in mind that the selection and use of linguistic units with an archaic-sublime connotation is only one of many patterns that determine the stylistic and speech systematicity of religious speech. Thus, the regular use of means of symbolizing phenomena of the spiritual world (metaphors, allegories, comparisons) was noted above. Other tropes and figures of speech are also widely used, and their functions consist not so much in its decoration, but in the effective implementation of communicative tasks in the religious sphere, primarily the task of emotional impact on the consciousness of the addressee. Active, as already indicated, are the means that express the modality of the certainty of what is being communicated (introductory words of the corresponding semantics, constructions of someone else’s speech, etc.). Evaluative linguistic units are often used, forming a kind of stylistic antithesis in religious speech holiness (virtue) - sin. Grammatical means of expressively enhancing evaluation are widely used: prefix pre, expressing the highest degree of quality: most blessed, most holy, most pure; forms superlatives adjectives: most honest, most glorious, greatest, most powerful and under. The conciliarity of religious communication reveals itself in the active use of the personal pronoun of the 1st person plural, as well as the personal possessive pronoun our and the corresponding verb forms: …we can move from defilement to eternal salvation. And this is in our will. It's up to us. And when we do this small thing according to our small strengths, it may come to us great power God. And we prepare ourselves only by studying this word day and night...- Archimandrite Sophrony.

It is important to keep in mind that in any church-religious text (and often in a separate fragment of it) one finds the manifestation of a whole complex of stylistic features created by the specific selection and use of language means:

...we trust in the mercy of God, we hope that our sins have not yet completely destroyed our soul.

You ask: “Isn’t the soul immortal?” Of course, she is immortal, but if she is all saturated with evil, then in the process of purification she will, as it were, lose herself. What will be left of her?

...But the one who is still here, in this earthly life, collects spiritual treasures for himself through prayer, goodness and the fight against his own sins, brings himself closer to the Gospel ideal, and even before death begins to cultivate wings that will carry him to eternity.- Archpriest Alexander Men.

There are linguistic units with an archaic-sublime coloring (we trust in God, to cultivate), and metaphors-symbols that have the same coloring (purification, wings, spiritual treasures), and words of religious-evaluative semantics (sin, evil, good), and marker of speech reliability (introductory word of course) as part of a question-answer complex. In addition, it is significant to use the personal pronoun We and the personal forms of the verb: we hope..., we hope.

In this combination, “alloy” of these features, the stylistic and speech systematicity of the church-religious style is manifested, created by the natural use of interrelated linguistic units and expressing the specificity of religious speech.

At the same time, church and religious speech is heterogeneous. The considered invariant features of it are always supplemented by particular features inherent in one or another genre, and within its framework - one or another typical textual unit - doxology, thanksgiving, petition, repentance, explanation of doctrinal truths, narration of the events of sacred history, instruction, reproof, etc. .

For example, a prayer request, as well as pastoral instruction, involve, in particular, the use of definite personal sentences with the main member expressed by the imperative mood of the verb. (The illocutionary acts performed in this case, of course, are different: in the first case it is a plea, in the second it is an urgent appeal.) Lord, forgive us sinners! Grant us all, Lord, a saving time of fasting and repentance...; Help everyone. Don't be vicious. If the call is addressed not to a group of parishioners, but to all followers of Christian teaching, then the sentence takes on a generalized personal meaning: Thou shalt not kill.

In addition, the instructions widely include sentences with a compound verbal predicate, including modal words with the meaning of obligation or necessity: We must love God with all our hearts; You must preserve the purity of your soul in every possible way, you must avoid all temptations and seductions in every possible way. But unlike official business texts expressing a legal prescription, the modality of an appeal or teaching is implemented here.

In any other textual unit, for example, in the explanation of religious truth, a largely different set of frequently used linguistic and speech means is revealed. They will be nominal subject-predicate sentences (N1 -N1): Sin is a deliberate violation of the will of God; Baptism is a sacrament of the Church; complex sentences with conjunctions or allied analogues of cause and effect semantics: Christ was born of the Virgin, because Mary could not belong to anyone: neither her parents, nor her husband; We are people, and therefore God reveals himself to us in human form. It is natural to see question-and-answer moves that activate the attention of listeners: Who is a prophet? This is a man through whose mouth the Spirit of God speaks; What does it mean? This means that by the power of the Lord we are made partakers of the Glory of Christ.

It is noteworthy that, in accordance with the goal setting of certain text units, they develop characteristic semantic shades of grammatical forms. For example, when interpreting Gospel parables and other stories, the preacher often uses the verb form of the present tense, which has a special meaning - the present all-time. In contrast to abstract timeless semantics, reflecting a certain pattern ( The sun rises in the east), all-time meaning reflects an action performed not just always, but in moment of speech And Always. According to D.S. Likhachev, “this is the present time of an event now taking place and at the same time an image of “eternity”” (Likhachev D.S. Selected works. L., 1987. T. 2. P. 565). Examples:

And we, like the Apostle Peter who drowned in the sea, are drowning in the sea of ​​life<…>But now...” you will see the Lord walking on the sea near you. He, the most merciful, is always with us, at all times of the day and night He calls us to fearlessly come to Him, He always extends to us the divine hand of His almighty help.- Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)

... let us remember our Heavenly Father, who stands, who waits, who will accept everyone who from the depths of their soul says: “Father, I have sinned before heaven and before You.”- Archpriest Alexander Men.

There is a modification of the semantics of a language unit in accordance with the specifics of the speech variety and its communicative attitudes.

Thus, in church and religious texts, along with their invariant stylistic characteristics, special features, related to the specifics of genres, as well as individual standard text units.

Borrowings from other styles

In speech works of the functional style under consideration, linguistic and speech means typical of other styles may occasionally be used. Does this indicate the “multi-style” of religious speech, its lack of stylistic unity?

No, it doesn't testify. As has been noted more than once, a functional style is a special quality of speech, a special nature of its organization, determined primarily by some general communicative goal setting (the purpose of the corresponding type of activity). In our case, the goal setting is to strengthen faith (the union of man with God). To achieve it, those means that are usually used in other communication areas can be used. Then other-style units are organically included in the speech system of the religious text; their functional coloring does not contrast with the general tone of speech, but complicates it in accordance with the characteristics of a specific communicative situation. Let's look at a few examples:

  1. If there are those among the penitents today who have ever committed direct murder, that is, killed someone willfully or accidentally with some weapon, hand, poison or something else, the priest must repent separately.- Archimandrite John (Peasant)
  2. Now winter comes, and all nature seems to die. The trees stand without leaves, the grass and flowers are dead, not a single bird sings in the forest, insects lie numb in their shelters. But then spring comes, comes new life and everything comes to life. Grass and flowers appear, trees again receive sap and are clothed in their beauty...- Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)
  3. ...in the street crowd we happen to see some drunkard who has just drunkenly rolled out in the mud. ...But we ourselves are in everything similar to this unfortunate man, if not much worse than him. The clothes of our souls are soiled with the stinking mud of passions and lusts.- Metropolitan Vladimir.

The first text fragment represents evidence (in the special, religious sense of the word) and contains scientific terminology: circle, center, point, radius. Moreover, the purpose of the priest’s speech, of course, is not a geometric substantiation of religious truth. It lies in the effective use of analogy, “visual evidence,” which corresponds to the peculiarities of religious consciousness, which allows, based on life (school) experience, to better assimilate the truth comprehended by faith. Thus, the preacher in his speech strictly follows the normative for religious activity to use the specific life experience of believers. Implementation of this setting does not exclude access to the form scientific proof and to scientific terms, but now in a different function - as a means of instilling religious ideas.

The second example illustrates the possibility of organically using language constructions typical of official business speech in religious texts. In fact, we have before us a complex sentence of imperative semantics ( I need to repent...), beginning with a subordinate clause, which is again characteristic of official business speech, and at the same time complicated by an explanatory phrase, including a number of homogeneous members: ... direct murder that is, killed someone voluntarily or accidentally with some weapon, hand, poison or something else . (In legal texts, such constructions are intended to accurately define the scope of the concept of an offense.) As we see, a syntactic means typical for the administrative-legal sphere of communication turns out to be in demand when solving a religious problem: together with other means, it is used in preparing believers for confession.

The third text fragment resembles a journalistic speech. The use of clichéd phrases from modern media in it is indicative: slavery of totalitarianism, market profit, impoverishment of the people, depreciation of money etc. Nevertheless, the preacher, when creating a text, does not carry out a political-ideological activity, as it might seem, but a strictly religious one. We are talking about a special variety of it, aimed at exposing the vices of the era, people’s adherence to sinful ideas and rules of behavior. The priest defends in this case not a political doctrine (this would be a deviation from the principle “the kingdom of God is not of this world”), but the need to follow Christian commandments not only in personal, but also in public life. At the same time, the religious truth about the inadmissibility of serving “foreign gods” is instilled. The use of journalistic vocabulary is predetermined here by the very genre topic of communication, while the ideological evaluation of words is transformed into religious evaluation.

The fourth fragment of the text reveals individual manifestations of figurative concretization - the most important feature of artistic speech. But even in this case, the preacher, using methods accepted in church practice, introduces listeners to religious truth. Evoking figuratively emotional memories in the minds of believers ( Grass and flowers appear, trees again receive sap and are clothed in their beauty), it creates an idea of ​​the universality of the transition from death to new life and thereby helps parishioners to assimilate the dogma of the future resurrection. The stylistic significance of the linguistic means used here is not in their form, but in their function.

Finally, the fifth example shows that colloquial and even colloquial words ( drunk, drunk, dirty), the stylistic coloring of which, as noted, is not consistent with the general elevated tonality of church-religious speech, can nevertheless be occasionally used in the latter. They sometimes appear as a means of optimizing communicative contact with the audience and as lexical material for denoting sinful things in human life: The clothes of our souls dirty... with dirt.

Status of the church-religious style

When deciding the issue of the stylistic status of church-religious speech, one must keep in mind that the styles of the modern Russian literary language are open types of its functioning that have developed in one or another communicative sphere, and that all of them, to a greater or lesser extent, allow the use of linguistic means of other spheres. At the same time, units that are different in style for any speech variety are used in it in a modified function and therefore cease to be means of a different style.

Religious speech is no exception. We have seen that units and phenomena characteristic of one or another of the functional styles of the Russian language can occasionally be included in the fabric of church and religious texts and that, participating in the performance of religious communicative tasks, they are functionally transformed in it, becoming elements of a new speech organization.

Thus, the texts of the considered sphere of communication, embodying faith and realizing its purpose, objectifying religious activity, are characterized by stylistic-speech consistency, corresponding to the specifics of religious speech, they display a holistic complex of specific stylistic features. Consequently, there is a special way of functioning of the modern Russian literary language, which forms one of its functional styles - church-religious.

The study of the church-religious style of the Russian literary language is just beginning. To gain a deeper understanding of the emerging issues in this area, familiarization with the following works will help:

  • Kozhina M. N. On the foundations of functional stylistics. Perm, 1968 (p. 160 - 175)
  • Krysin L.P. Religious-preaching style and its place in the functional-stylistic paradigm of the modern Russian literary language // Poetics. Stylistics. Language and culture / In memory of T. G. Vinokur. M., 1996
  • Mechkovskaya N. B. Language and religion. M., 1998
  • Maidanova L. M. Religious and educational text: stylistics and pragmatics // Russian language in the context of culture. Ekaterinburg, 1999
  • Prokhvatilova O. A. Orthodox preaching and prayer as a phenomenon of modern sounding speech. Volgograd, 1999
  • Krylova O. A. Does a church-religious functional style exist in the modern Russian literary language? // Cultural and speech situation in modern Russia. Ekaterinburg, 2000
  • Rozanova N. N. Communicative-genre features of temple sermon // Baudouin-de Courtenay: Scientist. Teacher. Personality. Krasnoyarsk, 2000
  • Shmeleva T.V. Confession // Culture of speech: Encyclopedic dictionary-reference book. M., 2003
  • Karasik V. I. Language circle: personality, concepts, discourse. M., 2004 (p. 266 - 276), etc.

See also foreign functional-stylistic studies.

  • I.5.3) Components of the Justinian Code (general characteristics).
  • II Financial analysis of the enterprise’s activities General assessment of the financial condition of the enterprise
  • II. General characteristics of the art of Ancient Egypt, periodization
  • III, IV and VI pairs of cranial nerves. Functional characteristics of nerves (their nuclei, areas, formation, topography, branches, areas of innervation).

    • Church-religious style serves the sphere of church-religious public activity and correlates with the religious form of public consciousness. Currently, the sphere of church-religious public activity is expanding its boundaries and is used not only in church services (in the genres of sermons, confessions, congregational prayer, etc.), but also in the media (in speeches by priests on radio and television).

    The purpose of the church-religious style- promote the unity of the human soul with God.

    Basic Style Functions:

    1) installation on the affirmation of faith;

    2) religious and educational;

    3) educational and didactic, etc.

    Main style features:

    · archaic-sublime tonality of speech, corresponding to the high goal of religious activity and serving as a manifestation of the centuries-old tradition of communication with God;

    · symbolization of facts and events of the invisible world;

    · evaluation of speech oriented towards religious values;

    · modality of certainty, reliability of what is being reported.

    The structure of this style includes the following: substyles:

    1) religious(catechetical), which consists of the genres of teachings and catechisms; treatises and interpretations;

    2) homiletical, represented by the genre of sermon delivered at the liturgy;

    3) epistolary, representing speech genres of correspondence of clergy with each other or with the laity;

    4) artistic and preaching, which consists of various texts correlated with genres fiction(thought, crying, song, etc.);

    5) prayerful, which reflect the genres of prayers in Russian.

    Language features church-religious style:

    1) linguistic means that have an archaic-sublime coloring - primarily Church Slavonicisms ( good, temple, oblivion, gain, humble, hope; Old Slavonic prefixes and suffixes: redeem, patron, comforter, intercession, boldness, humility; morphological Old Slavonic means: lord, father, Mother of God, saint and etc.);

    2) means of verbal expressiveness in the function of symbolizing phenomena of the spiritual world ( metaphors, allegories, similes);

    3) evaluative vocabulary ( most blessed, most pure, most holy, most glorious, greatest, most powerful and etc.);



    4) the conciliarity of religious communication is manifested in the active use of the personal pronoun of the 1st person plural, pronoun our and corresponding verb forms;

    5) extensive quotation from Holy Scripture: « With the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”[Matt. 7, 2];

    6) introductory words with the meaning of confidence, nouns true, true and derivative words true, truly, truly, truly.

    Control questions for self-test

    1. What is functional style?

    2. What functional styles are distinguished in the Russian literary language? Describe book functional styles (name the sphere of functioning, the main goal and objectives, the main stylistic features, list substyles and genre varieties).

    3. What are the linguistic (lexical, morphological and syntactic) features of the official business style?

    4. What are the linguistic (lexical, morphological and syntactic) features of the scientific style?

    5. What are the linguistic (lexical, morphological and syntactic) features of the journalistic style?

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