Semântica cognitiva aplicada: a radialidade da categoria RELIGIÃO nos discursos dos imigrantes italianos (de 1875 à década de 1950)

Abstract

This dissertation has the goal of reconstructing the cognitive cultural models that made up the conceptual category RELIGION, with a basis on the discourse of/about immigrants from the Old Italian colonies from the northern region of Rio Grande do Sul, in relation to how they experienced religiosity. This is done through a semantic analysis of the expressions used, for instance, in the texts of anthropologic and historiographic nature; reports of memories, letters, and diaries. The sources of this discourse are documented bibliographies that cover the period from 1875 to the decade of 1950. The corpus of this work is made up of 138 segments, organized accordingly into five categories with different sources. The investigation centers on the field of Cognitive Semantic, oriented by the Theory of Idealized Cognitive Models (TICM), proposed by Lakoff and his colleagues. This study justifies itself and guarantees its unprecedented nature since there has not yet been empirical studies done about religion in a culture or sub culture. The theory presented allows the evaluation of how a conceptual category structures itself and evolves in a culture. The analysis takes place inside the sphere of Catholic Religion, since this is the religion that predominates the culture in question. The method utilized is the hypothetic-deductive, from which the preliminary radial structure of the category is built, with a basis on the inspectional analysis of the initial corpus. The hypotheses is that: (1) the category has a structure that is propositional radial, in which the prototypical sub-models are RITUALS; (2) the category RELIGION has a radial structure having GOD as a radial axis and FATHER as the prototypical center; (3) metaphoric and metonymic structures organize extensions or projections from these rays; (4) the types of propositional structures, like the propositional model script, organize elements that make up the radial structure. The Moral Metaphor System is applied as a model that organizes this structure. The analyses of the selected corpus confirm the initial hypotheses suggested. The sub model RITUALS is confirmed as the one which prototypically represents the category. The other hypotheses confirmed concerns the influence of the propositional model script as the integral part of the RITUALS model. The preliminary hypothetic radial structure, at the end of the analyses, is adjusted to the findings of the research. This investigation does not aim to bring up conceptions of religion but rather to investigate the semantic-conceptual structure of RELIGION through the explicit codification reveled in linguistic expressions or in inferences from them, as well as through metaphoric, metonymic, and propositional models.