LITERARY JOURNALISM. PUBLIC SPEECHES. BIBLICAL MOTIFS

Abstract

This article focuses its attention on the functioning of the biblical motifs in American fiction and their penetration in American public speeches and non-fiction through literary journalism techniques. The findings of this work illustrate that biblical motifs and religious lexicon as a whole have been used steadily in the speeches of all U.S presidents. Taking into account that the majority of Americans (73%) relates to Christians, the biblical motifs belong to important rhetorical and stylistic tools of all U.S. presidents in their search for the support of voters. Since Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), there has been an apparent tendency to employ more religious words and biblical motifs. The most active users of them were Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush, and Barack Obama who applied 7.3, 4.8, and 4.1 religious words per one thousand in their speeches. While monitoring the biblical motifs in American mass media and multimedia, we identified the most periodically applied: God, All-Mighty, Lord, Supreme Being; Satan, Devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Baphomet; Saint Mary; Archangels; Angels; Four Horsemen of Apocalypses; The Three Wise Men; Messiah, the Chosen One; All-loving hero; Cain and Abel; Samson and Delilah; False prophet; Nephilim, giants. According to our findings 136 names of angels were determined in American fiction and non-fiction. As for the theological angels, whose names differ sometimes, their number is 123. The total number of Archangels, mentioned in America mass media, is 17. However, in the Bible and Enoch book just only seven archangels are named. The research results could be used by the specialists in media studies, journalism and philology, as well as by practical journalists and multimedia authors, including Ukrainian students, who plan to sharpen their skills in writing English content.