Tithing and Persuasive Discourse in Nigerian Pentecostal Sermons: A Socio-Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study investigates how tithing is discursively constructed and legitimised in Nigerian Pentecostal sermons through a socio-cognitive critical discourse analytical framework. While scholarship on Nigerian Pentecostalism has examined prosperity theology, church growth, and religious economy, limited attention has been paid to the specific linguistic strategies through which financial obligation is framed, normalised, and sustained in sermon discourse. This study addresses this gap by analysing persuasive language used in sermons that explicitly focus on tithing. Data consists of purposively selected sermon excerpts publicly available on YouTube and on the official media channels of prominent Nigerian Pentecostal preachers. Only sermons where tithing constitutes a central thematic focus were included, ensuring analytical relevance. The study adopts van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how discourse structures, cognitive framing, and ideological positioning interact in shaping congregational interpretation and response. Analysis reveals recurring persuasive strategies, including scriptural recontextualisation, fear appeals, testimonial legitimation, authority construction, and discursive closure. At the macro level, tithing is framed within a prosperity-centred religious ideology that links financial obedience to divine favour and spiritual legitimacy. At the meso level, rhetorical devices and directive speech acts position preachers as authoritative interpreters of divine instruction. At the micro level, lexical choices, metaphors, modality, and pronoun usage reinforce obligation, urgency, and compliance. The study demonstrates that tithing in Nigerian Pentecostal sermons is not merely a theological practice but a discursively organised system of persuasion through which belief, authority, and financial commitment are constructed and maintained. It contributes to scholarship on religious discourse, pragmatics, and African Pentecostal communication by foregrounding language as a central mechanism in the production and circulation of religious authority.