The rhetoric of religious "cults" : terms of use and abuse

"This study's departure point is the notion that "cults" have a distinctive language and way of recruiting members. First outlining a rhetorical framework, which encompasses contemporary discourse analysis, the persuasive texts of three movements--Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and Children of God--are analyzed in detail and their discourse compared with other kinds of recruitment literature. Cults' distinctive negative profile in society is not matched by a linguistic typology. Indeed, this negative profile seems to rest on the semantics and application of the term "cult" itself. --Publisher."
"The recruiting language of a range of 'cults', or marginal movements, is here examined in detail in the context of a popular conception that such organizations may 'brainwash' people into membership and adherence through abusive use of rhetoric. Annabelle Mooney shows that, there is little to distinguish the strategies and language used in the recruitment literature of such organizations from that employed by anti-cult organizations, or indeed corporate and other kinds of recruitment. These findings therefore question why it is that society fears such marginal movements. While the values of the 'cults' examined here may differ significantly from mainstream society, it seems that the term 'cult' as applied to them may be unjust and itself abusive."@en