Black Sermonology: A Corpus Based Research Project

This research explored the sociolinguistic processes of Black pastors as they craft their sermons for purposes of establishing emotional and spiritual connections with their congregants. The purpose of this research is to familiarize mental health clinicians with specific language that appeals to their Black clients in hopes that incorporating this language during clinical sessions would allow Black clients to feel comfortable, and accepted. This keyness (i.e., word usage differences) and collocation (i.e., word relationships) study found that the word that distinguishes Black protestant pastors’ sermons from White protestant pastors’ sermons is “black.” This indicates that race is not a topic that Black pastors and their congregations shy away from, but readily speak about what it means to be Black and what the Black experience is in America. This study also explored the word networks (collocates) around the words “black”, “free” ,and “power”. Limitations, and implications for further research and clinical practice are discussed.