COP 03 / Primary Research / Selling Religion in the Streets

It is sometimes common to walk around any major city and discover individuals who have gone out of their way to spread their message regarding religion. Tactics are utilised to engage passers by in their rhetoric; attempting to persuade the audience into investing in their religion. The use of language is a key method. 

Whilst in Leeds center, there was a couple of examples which I took photos of.

For example, the first image conveys volume through the use of capitalisation, drawing the audience's eye into the main focus of this religion which is 'Jesus Christ'. There is use of archaic lexis, 'cleanseth', as this is a quote pulled from the Bible. Using inclusive pronouns gives the audience a sense of belonging and responsibility e.g 'us', 'our'. Although the people who made these signs did not write the Bible, their choice of quotes is important in that they have language that aims to engage and persuade.

Aesthetically, these signs are bright which catches the eye of passers by, and large sans serif type is easy to read whilst walking. 

Alongside this, individuals may read aloud passages from the Bible or even have their own speech to try and persuade the audience to believe in the ideologies they do - to sell the religion to an extent, in an increasingly secular Western society. "Over the last 60 years, religion in Europe has seen a strong decline. On average throughout the 27 EU countries, only half of its people believe in God and 25.4% directly say that they have no religion" (Crabtree, 2016) 

 These signs are hand rendered in capitals, again to convey volume and attract the eye of the audience passing them by. Within these signs is a semantic field of 'doom'; e.g 'perish', 'forsake' and 'sins'. It aims to create a sense of guilt in the audience, and even fear that they will be punished for any mistakes they make in life. Declarative structures such as "God is Angry" also induces fear in the audience, as it is presented as a fact. The use of the auxiliary verb 'will' also invokes a sense of inevitability.

References

Crabtree, V. (2016) Secularisation theory: Will Modern society reject religion? What is secularism?Available at: http://www.humanreligions.info/secularisation.html#Europe (Accessed: 22 October 2016).