“Buscai as coisas do alto”: aspectos argumentativos e prosódicos do discurso religioso de padre Léo

• Ano de defesa: 2009
• Autor(a) principal: Moura, Kátia Araújo de
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade de Franca; Brasil; Pós-Graduação; Programa de Mestrado em Linguística; UNIFRAN
• Palavras-chave em Português: Prosódia; Argumentação; Discurso Religioso; Persuasão; CNPQ::LINGUISTICA, LETRAS E ARTES::LINGUISTICA
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.cruzeirodosul.edu.br/handle/123456789/863

This work aims at linguistically analyzing the intersection between the prosodic elements and the constitution of argumentation which intends to gain the audience’s support within the religious discourse of Priest Leo, a charismatic representative of the Catholic church. For this analysis, we have selected as corpus the sermon entitled “Buscai as coisas do alto”, preached in December of 2006. We have a hypothetical idea that, when preaching, apparently spontaneously, the priest carries out his argumentative route by using rhetoric-argumentative elements that are corroborated by prosodic elements, which awards the discourse a greater resource to persuade his audience. By working with the theoretical considerations of Argumentation, as “the wish to persuade, to listen and to let be convinced”, according to Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1997), and of the Prosody, as “the set of phonic phenomena which are located beyond the linear segmented representation of phonemes”, according to Bollela (2006), we have found, in the religious discourse, a meaningful corpus to our analysis. There is a countless number of aspects which could be analyzed in the selected corpus, however, for the present work, we have shown how the genre religious sermon is built, which rhetoric-argumentative elements (the arguments based on the structure of reality and the ones that found the structure of reality) constitute this discourse and how the prosodic elements interfere in the persuasion process. We have identified some prosodic elements which we have judged as the most relevant: pitch, as variation of melodic loudness; volume, as sound intensity; and pause, as variation of duration. Our analysis was based on the Theory of Argumentation and Rhetoric according to Aristoteles (2003), in the conception of New Rhetoric by Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (2005), in the concepts of Meyer (2003), Reboul (2004), Tringali (1988), Citelli (2005), among others, who have studied the premises and argumentative techniques, as well as the studies of prosodic elements by Bollela (2006), Cagliari (1992), Scarpa (1999), Massini-Cagliari & Cagliari(2001), among others. As methodology, we have addressed the Theory of the Genre according to Figueiredo et al. (2009) in order to provide a characterization of the religious genre sermon. We have also listened and transcribed the audio according to the rules of Projeto NURC/SP (1985). The data collection and the transcription of the lectures were made with the help of the softwares Praat 4.6.12 and Sound Forge 8.0. We could verify that this discourse is built upon the ethos of the lecturer, which brings more authority to his speech in the quotations of the God’s words. It is God the one who gives orders so that the priest can preach. Thus, the priest is chosen, obedient to the divine words, worthy of being listened to. The lecturer inserts the most appropriate quality of voice to the argumentation whenever he wants to wake the passion of compassion in moments of reflection. He argues through sacrifice, reinforces his prestige towards the audience, by showing the difference between persuading and convincing. He uses a different range of volume and pitch and makes use of repetitions and pauses in order to show his authority, wisdom and persuasion. These elements are all tied and depend upon one another so that the lecturer can achieve his mission of praying the Gospel based on an emotional testimony of his own life experience, by aiming at making-believe in the preached sermon. Key words: Prosody; Argumentation; Religious Discourse; Persuasion.