A Multilevel Stylistic Analysis of the Language of Worship in Selected Hillsongs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68050/JAMS.2026.660Keywords:
Linguistic Stylistics, language of worship, Hillsong songs, stylistic analysisAbstract
This study analyzed the language of worship in five selected Hillsong songs: Oceans (Where Feet May Fail), What a Beautiful Name, Who You Say I Am, So Will I (100 Billion X), and Cornerstone. It used Linguistic Stylistics as the overarching framework and employed a qualitative descriptive approach to examine the songs at four linguistic levels: lexical, syntactic, semantic, and discourse. The analysis covered diction and word choice, repetition, pronoun use, emotive and evaluative expressions, sentence and clause structures, parallelism, coordination and subordination, metaphor, symbolism, personification, imagery, address and reference to God, speaker–addressee relationships, thematic progression, and recurring discourse patterns.
The analysis found that religious, relational, emotive, and evaluative vocabulary plays a central role in expressing faith, worship, identity, praise, dependence, and relationship with God. Repetition, parallelism, and recurring syntactic structures give emphasis to key ideas and contribute to rhythm and memorability. Metaphor, symbolism, personification, and imagery make abstract religious concepts more concrete through images of water, storms, foundations, creation, freedom, and family. At the discourse level, God or Jesus is frequently positioned as a central subject or addressee. The songs also develop recurring patterns, including human uncertainty moving toward divine assurance, divine action followed by human response, and previous conditions leading to transformed identity. Furthermore, the lexical, syntactic, semantic, and discourse features contribute to meanings associated with praise, trust, dependence, identity, gratitude, devotion, and surrender. The study concludes that Linguistic Stylistics offers a useful way of examining how different linguistic choices work together in the construction and expression of worship in contemporary Christian song lyrics.
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