Approaches and Methods

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the two key approaches drawn upon in the book, namely the Discourse Historical Approach (cf. Wodak, The politics of fear: what right-wing populist discourses mean, Sage, 2015) and the Theory of Visual Grammar (cf. Kress and Leeuwen, Reading images: The grammar of visual design, Routledge, 2006). The two approaches fall under the umbrella of Critical Discourse Studies. To elaborate on the suitability of the choice of the DHA and the Theory of Visual Grammar for the research inquiries of the book, the first section of this chapter will provide an overview of the development of religious preaching in the Muslim context, arguing that performance appears to be a key aspect of the sermon genre. While reviewing recent research that has explored performance in the religious context (cf. Pihlaja, Religious talk online: the evangelical discourse of Muslims, Christians, and atheists, Cambridge University Press, 2018; Rosowsky in: Rosowsky (ed) Faith and language practices in digital spaces. Multilingual Matters, Bristol, 2018), the chapter will argue that combining the DHA and the Theory of Visual Grammar will allow for exploring performance from a multimodal point of view. The second section of the chapter will discuss further the theoretical underpinnings of the two approaches, moving on to elaborate on the key analytical categories for data analysis in the book, for instance, nominalization, predication argumentation strategies and visual features including visual structure, dress code and gestures. Finally, the chapter will provide insights into the research ethics (cf. Wilkinson and Thelwall, Social Science Computer Review 29:387–401, 2011; Aiston, Modern Languages Open 2023:1–11, 2023) that have guided data collection and analysis.