“I am the Christ”: Keyness Analyses of the Sermons of Christ Claimants

Abstract

Various religious leaders claim that they are Jesus Christ (the fundamental figure in Christianity), which makes their groups highly distinct from other religious groups. This claim allows society to view generally these leaders as false Christs. To guide individuals in society in identifying their characteristics empirically, in this paper, the language in the discourses of these leaders from the aboutness and communication style perspectives is viewed through the key linguistic features identified. The sermons of Apollo Quiboloy (the leader of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ) and the sermons of AJ Miller (the leader of Divine Truth) who view themselves as Jesus Christ incarnate were used as the target corpora. The sermons of these leaders were compared to different versions of the four canonical gospels (namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) as the benchmark corpora found in the Christian Bible using keyness analyses to identify the patterns of key linguistic features in the sermons for language characterization. The findings show that the language in the sermons of Apollo Quiboloy displays concepts such as the relationship of father and I (son) which are likely to be similar when compared to the gospels, whereas the language in the sermons of AJ Miller displays psychological concepts which are likely to be different when compared to the gospels. The findings in the sermons of Christ claimants may allow the characteristics of these religious leaders to be identified.