Terms of use and abuse: the recruiting rhetoric of cults

Mooney, Annabelle Nell (2001) Terms of use and abuse: the recruiting rhetoric of cults. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Cults are negatively regarded. The way in which they persuade people to join their movements is particularly criticised by, for example, the anti-cult movement. Cults do use language in specific ways to recruit new members. There are, however, other groups who use language similarly, for recruitment purposes, but without stigmatisation. A new framework for rhetorical analysis, incorporating both classical tradition and contemporary work in text analysis, is particularly useful at demonstrating this. This thesis develops such a framework and uses it to analyse the rhetoric of three cults, Scientology, The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Children of God, showing that 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. Not only does this analysis increase our understanding of rhetoric, it paves the way for new questions to be asked about the pejoration of cults.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics; P Language and Literature > PE English
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Supervisor's Name: Kay, Prof. Christian and Emmott, Dr. Catherine
• Date of Award: 2001
• Depositing User: Ms Anikó Szilágyi
• Unique ID: glathesis:2001-6411
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 01 Jun 2015 11:09
• Last Modified: 01 Jun 2015 11:16
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6411