| dc.description.abstract | The focus of this study is the language employed in Catholic homilies in Queen of
Apostles Seminary Ruaraka. The aim is to find out what makes disparate discourse
sentences hang together as well as the tools used by homilists to knit together their
messages. Further, the study aims at finding out the role of topic as a coherence principle
and how the principle organizes the speech into a coherent whole as well as assessing
how meaning is conveyed in concrete situations. An eclectic theoretical approach is
assumed in the study involving the Halliday and Hasan (1976), Cohesion approach,
Brown and Yule (1983); Topic framework theory and Grice (1975), Implicature approach.
Data collected was transcribed before being analyzed within the stipulated theoretical
frameworks. The study found out that topic is the strongest coherence principle used by
homilists to achieve relevance and by the congregation to interpret what is relevant and
what is not relevant. The study therefore recommends a further study on the relevance of
prosody in homilies. | en_US |
