White martyrs, urban monks and contemplative influencers: Discursive authority in web-based spiritual formation

Social media platforms increasingly shape contemporary religious discourse, with YouTube acting as an important site for the dissemination of mysticism. Contemplative influencers (CIs) use the platform to promote spiritual formation and practices. This study relates to how CIs construe discursive authority through lexicogrammatical choices in their online discourse. Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), it advocates a mixed-methods approach combining the computational statistical method of Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) and discourse analysis. A custom corpus of over 4,000 CI videos is compared with a reference corpus using keyness and dispersion analyses to identify salient lexicogrammatical constructions: epistemic and attitudinal complements (e.g. I know that x ; you’ll want to x ; truth that x ), modality (e.g. might ) and stylistic resources (e.g. philosophically ). These key markers are interpreted through SFL’s ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions to reveal how recurrent co-instantiations function as semantic configurations that characterise ethos, authenticity and religious stance. Maingueneau’s theory further elucidates how CIs stage themselves as emotionally credible spiritual guides within a digital scenography. The study’s findings show that seemingly subjective expressions (e.g. I know that x ; we’ve got to x ; we’re going to x ) are universalised or rhetorically charged, projecting moral certainty, relational sincerity and visionary leadership. CIs strategically manage the tension between performativity and authenticity by linking personal narrative to shared contemplative values, thereby constructing a digital register of spiritual authority.