A Discourse Study of Persuasion Strategies in Kurdish Friday Sermons

Islamic preachers, like preachers of other religions, employ copious persuasive techniques to convince mosquegoers and adherents of other religions to embrace the tenets, ideas, and concepts they cleave to. This paper examined the techniques used in one of the Kurdish Friday sermons and explained the reasons why these techniques were utilized. Further, the study cast light on the frequency of the persuasive strategies and identified which technique was used most or least often. To accomplish this, a 33-minute Kurdish sermon delivered by a well-known Kurdish preacher called Mullah Mohammad Faeeq Sharazoori was investigated using the framework provided by Johnstone (1989). As the analysis revealed, Sharazoori heavily employed two distinct strategies: quasilogical and presentational strategies, with the analogical strategy being the third most prevalent persuasive strategy used in the sermon. The findings also showed that the deixis technique, which is subsumed under the category of presentational strategy, was the most widely employed, aimed at arousing a sense of inclusion and solidarity with the listeners. Rhetorical questions and hypophora, two techniques of the quasilogical strategy, were the second most incorporated techniques in the sermon utilized by the aforesaid preacher to draw his audiences attention to cogitate on their deeds as well as the significance of making supplication to God. The preacher resorted to applying these techniques to build an intimate relationship with the mosquegoers, aiming to convince them to embrace the messages presented in the sermon. Emotional appeal, logical reasoning, and the use of old narratives and traditional wisdom were important strategies utilized for building the intended relationship and delivering the message.