Religion and language: a proposal to articulate such a complex field

Abstract

The relationship between religion and language is the focus of renewed attention in the Brazilian graduate programs in Religious Studies through Congress working groups and areas of concentration devoted to the study of what is conventionally called Religious Languages. This article proposes a link to this new field of study through a semiotic and cognitive approach, suggesting the study of religion as a secondary language system through three fundamental semiotic systems: gesture, image (metaphor) and narrative. Their religious counterparts are ritual, icon (poetry) and myth. These three systems work together as hybrid and multi codified cultural texts, with a high level of power in creating new messages. Finally, the article also discusses the fictional and grotesque aspects of religious expressions as well as some of its distinctive features. According to them, besides the fact that religion structures the world, religion tends to stress and explicit the “as if” games of culture, and pushes cultural representations to the borders of its established systems. Religion proposes to culture dense and kaleidoscopic representation systems, who articulate textually ambiguous and paradoxal aspects of social life.