Stance, acts and identity construction in Christian response sermons on insecurity in Nigeria.

Generally, linguistic scholarship on Christian sermons has used discourse-analytic and pragmatic tools to explore rhetorical appeal, participants involved, and patterns of metaphorisation, reference assignment, and speech acting in the discourse. However, it has not accounted for how stance acts enhance the identities constructed in sermons. To fill this gap, Christian video sermons involving three popular Nigerian preachers were obtained from YouTube between January and February 2020. The preachers are Bishop David Oyedepo from Living Faith Church, Pastor Paul Enenche from Dunamis International Gospel Centre, and Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah from the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto. Relying on field observation to understand the contexts, six sermons were purposively selected from a larger pool, transcribed, and subjected to content analysis, incorporating insights from interactional identity construction and stance theories. The findings reveal six opposing identities constructed in the sermons: perpetrators versus victims of insecurity; supporters of insecurity versus adversaries; violent versus peaceful religion; marginalised versus privileged citizens; terrorists versus the terrorised; and predictors versus the condemned. These identities, jointly constructed by Christian preachers from different denominations, inform their use of stance-taking elements such as modal verbs, stance adverbs, and to- and that-complement clauses. In addition to bridging gaps in the existing literature on Christian sermons, the findings provide metalinguistic insights into the underlying messages behind Christian responses to Nigeria's insecurity, which is alleged to be perpetrated by Fulani (Islamic) bandits. Overall, these insights reveal the ideological processes that contribute to Christian-Muslim distrust in Nigerian politics.