Study of the utterance and discourse genres: a bakhtinian analysis of letters of religious chants

Abstract

Anchored in the dialogical perspective of discourse, this research aims to analyze religious chants from three distinct matrices: one in Umbanda, another in the Catholic Church, and a third sung by followers of Santo Daime, in order to observe how the same genre mobilizes its system of social values, as well as establishes dialogues with the interlocutors presumed by the different religions. In light of concepts from the Bakhtin Circle — such as utterance, social evaluation, ideological sign, and genres of discourse — three widely disseminated utterances on the internet were examined. The results pointed to two central axes: on the one hand, religion as a spiritually superior instance to its audience; on the other, religion as necessary, offering healing to human suffering and sins. It was also found that the lexical choices in each of the chants are not arbitrary; they reflect and refract the ideologies specific to each religious practice. Finally, it was found that the evaluative intonation constituted the guiding thread in the way the statements are directed to their presumed interlocutors. Thus, based on the similarities and differences between the chants, it was possible to understand the relative stability of the genre, which is (trans)formed depending on the anticipated listener.