Parliamentary Discourses on Same-Sex Marriage: A Brazilian Case

This presentation brings a reflection on the religion in the public sphere in the Brazilian reality. The corpus presented and analysis presents here are developments of my mastering research. The speeches analyzed on this paper are from the Chamber of Deputies in the 54th legislature, specifically between 2011 and 2013, and their themes were egalitarian marriage. It is interesting to say that the three deputies that compose the corpus of this presentation have the religious title of pastor and composed the so-called Evangelical Bench; the speeches are related to the decision of the Federal Supreme Court and National Council of Justice on same-sex marriage.

In theory and methodology, there is a double anchorage: in linguistics and in sociology. I make use of a linguistic approach as a tool for a sociological analysis. I use Systemic-Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, with the observation of the Appraisal System, which focuses on the observation of the attitude of the speakers to what is being said, as of the engagement and graduation of them with what they say.

From the linguistic analysis, it is possible to observe the religious behavior presented in the Brazilian political reality. I use, in order to investigate that, the approach of multiple modernities, that presents a vision of the world being modern but having diverse possibilities of modernities and its inner relations.

As a work affiliated in a critical perspective, with one of the purposes the reflection that help to deepen democracy in Brazil, this work observes how a religion under a fundamentalist scope effectively behaves in the Brazilian reality. The deprivatization of religion in Brazil is, then, one of the key points of the presentation of this investigation. This observation is intended to equip the academy and social movements for a more just society.