‘A UK Sociolinguistic Perspective: Gene, Jeffrey and Evangelical ‘Broad Inclusion’ Intersubjectivity’

Critical sociolinguistics (conceived as Critical Discourse Analysis: CDA), which has a focus on inclusive and exclusive language within social practice, can be used to shed light on underlying aspects of recent debates about the appointment of homosexual bishops in the UK and USA. One strand of the CDA approach is to examine the social cognitions implicit in the behaviours of communities. In the case of the religious communities involved here, a basic feature of their differences lies in their use of contrasting socio-theological, mentally-encoded schemata: the Evangelical, group-focused, strong commitment frame (SCF) contrasts sharply with the more liberally-inclined, more ‘individual-respecting’, social normalcy frame (SNF). One of the consequences of this is that Evangelicals appear to enjoy a particularly strong sense of ‘mental bonding of outlook’, intersubjectivity, in which a high focus on group objectives and social outlooks is closely allied to their traditional beliefs. And although Evangelical, ‘group- thought’ intersubjectivity may aid mental resistance to change on some social issues (eg homosexual bishops), it may however also help maintain ‘broad inclusion’ in terms of social marginalisation of normally more common, but perhaps less ‘culturally visible’ kinds (eg the single and elderly).