The Rhetoric of Religious Cults takes as its departure point 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 analysed 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.