Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: ALEXANDRE RIBEIRO EMILIANO

Discursive constitution on Gender and Sexuality in the Catholic religious field: 

interpretative analysis of the surrounding speeches of two Popes of the 21st century

Gender and Sexuality; Speech; surrouding discourses; Family; homosexuality; applied linguistics.

Since the last century, debates about gender and sexuality have become increasingly present in academic circles and in society in general. Understanding that discussions about these themes are important for the displacement of meanings that today is part of actions of prejudice and violence, this research is part of the area of Applied Linguistics. (Fabrício, 2006; Moita Lopes, 2002, 2006), in a implied perspective (Souto Maior, 2022), considering gender discourses (Louro, 2008, 2009, 2015, Butler 2003, Scott, 2017, hooks, 2015, hooks, 2019) and Bakhtin studies (2010). In this sense, I seek to observe that Surrouding discourses (Souto Maior, 2009; 2022; 2023) base the discursive tensions of the Catholic Christian discursive field, understanding that this is one of the most traditional spaces that produce and reproduce meanings in social practices. Thus, these vast sets of spaces and instances socially“exercise pedagogies” (Meyer, 2002) and teach ways of being in the world and behaving. The research corpus is composed of three speeches by Pope Bento XVI (two addressed to the diplomatic corps and one to the Roman Curia in Vatican City) and the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, by Pope Francisco, in order to observe the Surrounding Discourses, from the use of the terms “family” and “homosexuality”, constructed by the interactions between the saying of the one who speaks in the name of the Church and society, which also constitutes this discourse. Regarding the methodology, I developed a qualitative study (Freitas, 2007; Amorim, 2007; Flik, 2009, 2004) with an interpretive nature (Lessa, 2010; Moita Lopes, 1994). The research questions that supported the analysis were: a) which discourses are found in the official pronouncements of the aforementioned popes on the themes “Family" and “Homosexuality”? b) which Involving Discourses do we find in this excerpt?; c) how are these constructed discourses? d) what are the possible implications of the meanings formulated by these Surrounding Discourses for the construction of meanings in contemporary times? Given the need to debate the subject and considering that, in our society, issues linked to sexuality and gender discussions constitute and are constituted by social practices that, based on the way they occur, interfere in the way in which subjects experience the world, I consider that problematizing religious institutional discourses is fundamental to enable questions that can construct other meanings distanced from prejudice and discrimination.