Psychological Acts in Bishop Oyedepo's Sermon Titled ‘Gateways to Financial Fortune'

Abstract

This paper critically examines psychological acts in Bishop Oyedepo's sermon titled ‘Gateways to financial fortune'. A descriptive design and a qualitative method were adopted for the study. Purposive sampling technique was adopted in the selection of six (6) samples that contain the targeted linguistic words and expressions. The sample texts were subjected to textual analysis. Analysis of the data was done within the framework of the pragmatic acts theory. The psychological acts (emotions) were identified and analysed. The study revealed the psychological acts through the Pragmeme of ‘emotives 'to pract disapproval, fear, depression, doubt and excitement.The psychological acts identified from the data revealed the state of the mind of both the preacher and the congregation. It described the preacher's emotion, and enabled the congregation decode meaning. The paper concluded that the utterances and texts in sermons are forms of social actions that occur in complex social contexts and it identifies the function of the speaker's utterances in context as a way of performing social actions and creating social realities.  The study recommends that Preachers should explore the linguistic choices available for use in sermon delivery through communicative competence for comprehensive sermon delivery and adequate understanding.