Relevance of Cohesion in Digitally Delivered Sermons among Christian religious preachers

The innovations in technology is providing Christian religious preachers in different parts of the world with a tool and a channel for reaching their members and non-members in different parts of the world. Preachers currently upload their sermons on social media platforms, such as YouTube, where viewers all over the world can listen to their religious teachings. These sermons, though bearing several messages, are logically delivered to ensure that meaning is not lost. One of the key linguistic devices that helps them achieve this feat is cohesion. The aim of this study, therefore, is to identify the use of cohesion in sermons delivered digitally. It collected data from four sermons delivered by two Nigerian and two non-Nigerian Pentecostal church preachers. These sermons were sourced from YouTube. Their audios were transcribed into text, after which it was qualitatively analysed through the theoretical perspective of Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) theory of cohesion. Findings show the use of grammatical and lexical cohesions, which were achieved with grammatical and lexical cohesive devices, respectively. The study also discovered that the cohesive devices helped the preachers to make references, ensure clarity, show relationships, and connect ideas. It concluded that cohesion plays important roles in sermons delivered digitally.