Sacred Discourse Stylistics: Foundations, Analytical Frameworks, and Research Directions

Research on sacred discourse has expanded across linguistics, rhetoric, discourse studies, theology, and hermeneutics. However, existing scholarship remains conceptually fragmented, with studies often examining language, rhetoric, interpretation, or communication in isolation. As a result, sacred discourse has yet to be established as a distinct domain of stylistic inquiry. This article addresses that gap by proposing Sacred Discourse Stylistics (SDS) as an interdisciplinary field for the systematic study of sacred discourse. Drawing on stylistics, rhetoric, discourse analysis, pragmatics, hermeneutics, and theolinguistics, the article identifies four defining characteristics of sacred discourse: sacrality, aestheticity, hermeneuticity, and performativity. It further develops the Five-Layer Sacred Discourse Stylistics Framework (SDSF), comprising phonological, lexico-grammatical, rhetorical-stylistic, pragmatic-communicative, and hermeneutic-interpretive dimensions. In addition, the article proposes a methodological toolkit integrating close stylistic reading, rhetorical analysis, cognitive stylistics, corpus stylistics, critical stylistics, and computational approaches. Finally, it outlines a research agenda spanning sacred text studies, comparative sacred discourse, translation, digital humanities, and artificial intelligence. The article contributes a theoretical foundation, an integrated analytical framework, and a future research agenda for the emerging field of Sacred Discourse Stylistics.