The Interaction of Edification and Persuasionin the Orthodox Christian Religious Communication
The article presents the results of the analysis of edification and persuasion in the speech genres of sermon and pastoral Epistles in Orthodox Christian church and religious discourse. The authors give the general characteristics of the church and religious subtype of religious communication, describe the characteristics of the subtype compared to other spheres of religious communication, discuss the features of institutionality and state the didactic character of church and religious discourse. Linguistic means of edification aredetermined: Keywords, basic semantic oppositions, appeal to precedent texts and illustrative examples, axiological means, imperative constructions, etc. The dominance of indirect edification, realized through the means of deontic, axiological and optative modality, is revealed. The key features of axiological modality in religious communication are identified: the hierarchy of evaluated objects, absolute and explicit character of evaluation. The strength of persuasion is reduced with the help of the author image, which is marked by the inclusive pronoun “we”. The main communicative strategies are described: axiological, persuasive and the strategy of appeal.