The Rhetoric of Religious Cults
Terms of Use and Abuse| By: | A. Mooney |
| Publisher: | Springer Nature |
| Print ISBN: | 9781403942852 |
| eText ISBN: | 9780230504417 |
| Edition: | 0 |
| Copyright: | 2005 |
| Format: | Page Fidelity |
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The Rhetoric of Religious Cults takes as its departure point the notion that 'cults' have a distinctive language and way of recruiting members. First outlining a rhetorical framework, which encompasses contemporary discourse analysis, the persuasive texts of three movements - Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and Children of God - are analysed in detail and their discourse compared with other kinds of recruitment literature. Cults' distinctive negative profile in society is not matched by a linguistic typology. Indeed, this negative profile seems to rest on the semantics and application of the term 'cult' itself.