Unit 5. The style of religion

The style of religion is distinguished as a separate entity by D. Crystal and D.Davy (1969) and by V. Naer(1981); most Soviet scholars do not mention it. Still, the fact is that this style has achieved quite a respectable status of its own in the English-speaking countries. Though the religious form of social conscience mani­fests itself in numerous forms and practices, and fulfils various functions in a society, the main aim of the religious functional style maybe defined as expressing religious belief on public occasions. Elements of the religious style may be used also in litera­ture and in humour, they can penetrate the daily colloquial speech as well.

The religious style is not uniform - it falls into at least three substyles: 1) the biblical substyle, 2) the liturgical substyle and 3) the theological discourse substyle. The forms of realization of the religious style include, of course, the texts of the Scriptures (The Old Testament, The New Testament), as well as formal reading from the Scriptures, common biblical prayers, sermons (which have more in common with other oratory pieces) and theological discourse. There also exist books of pray­ers and religious hymns; prayers and sermons are regularly televized and broadcast over the radio.

The core of the religious style is formed, in a sense, by the biblical substyle, which seriously influences all sub-spheres of religious communication. Stylistically rele­vant is the fact that The Scriptures are available in many variants, or editions. "The authorized" version of The Bible is the so-called King James' version, characterized by archaic lexis and syntax. Widespread nowadays are other versions of The Bible, written in easily understood modem day English.

Let us consider some of the linguistic styleforming features.

The language is marked by graphical, lexical and syntactical peculiarities.

Graphical features include capitalization (God, Lord), italics (it is mine, shewed you ray kindness), archaic spelling in some editions (Iesus), numbering paragraphs.

Noticeable are archaic pronouns (ye, thee, thou, thy, thine), archaic forms of verbs (beholdest, considerest, asketh, receiveth, seekest, findeth), and, of course, religious terms (Lord, Father which is in heaven, evil, devils, false prophets).

Syntactical stylistic devices may include parallelism, inversion (wide is the gate, ­and great was the fall of it), anaphora (or... or...), epiphora (... you,... you) polysyndeton and so on.

One can also come across metaphors (good tree bringeth forth good fruit; rain descended and beat against the home).

But, surprisingly, the "newest" version of The Bible makes more prominent some of the devices which are still there, like lexical repetition and root repetition (judge-judge - judge, the same - the same), very effective oppositions (ask - receive, seek-find, knock - open, bread - stone, fish - snake, bad - good). The modern text also preserves most of the syntactical stylistic devices.

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