A SOCIO-LINGUISTIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE USE IN DIFFERENT CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS

Language is one of the best gifts that man is ever endowed with. Human beings developed language in order to communicate with one another within a speech community. A speech community is made up of people who use a given language which need not have any social or cultural unity. It is based on this that the church qualifies as a speech community. This paper therefore, is an attempt to carry out a socio-linguistic survey of language use in different Christian denominations, in expressing their religious beliefs and faith. These denominations include: Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox. The paper carried out a survey of the expressions used by these different Christians denominations during their worship and its effects on them. The descriptive method of data analysis was used in the analysis of data gathered for this work. The paper carried out a socio-linguistic analysis of language use in different denominations under different headings. The speech patterns and language codes of the denominations were collected and analysed the under different headings. The findings from this research revealed that though Christians worship the same God, but the languages used by different denominations differ. The work also showed that the difference amongst the different denominations is just in the choice of words, semantic interpretation of the scriptures and not. philosophical one. This work should be of great relevance to researchers on language use.