Means of implementing didactic tone in religious text (on the material of orthodox sermons)

The paper studies how didactic tonality is linguistically expressed in texts of sermons. Didactic tonality is viewed as a category of intentionality - a more general textual category inherent in any type of communication if the latter is viewed as an activity. The material for the study included 68 texts of sermons of the famous in Russia archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church, theologian, author of books on theology, history of Christianity and other religions, Alexander Men. The activity approach, as well as the functional-stylistic, structural-semantic, cognitive, contextual, comparative-quantitative and pragmatic methods of analysis allowed us to establish that in the sermon as a genre, intentionality is realized through a specific tonality, or such a textual modality that reflects the main intention of the author of speech in religious preaching - to bring a person closer to faith and God, to teach them faith in God. The intention of ‘teaching’ is defined in the study as didactic tonality and is considered as an auxiliary category of intentionality functioning in texts of religious sermons. The paper reveals linguistic and speech means representing didactic tonality in texts, describes the structural-semantic, pragmatic and stylistic features of these means. Didactic tonality was found to be the key textual category in terms of implementation of the main author’s intention (conceptual idea and meaning) in a sermon. The research findings demonstrate that in the sermons of Alexander Men, various means belonging to different linguistic levels are harmoniously combined: lexical units and syntaxemes that express the semantics of reflection, obligation, call for joint action, as well as textual means that include examples from pastoral life and dialogical constructions in the form of direct speech.