“Miracle beans”: a semiolinguistic analysis of the commercialization of faith

Abstract

The pandemic prelude caused physical and mental afflictions to the world and,
in particular, to our country. The lack of knowledge about the virus, due to little scientific
information on the action of the coronavirus pandemic, led to a situation that had a negative
repercussion in May 2020, when the world was still looking for scientifically proven solutions.
Pastor Valdemiro Santiago, in a position of religious authority, promoted the sale of beans
that, supposedly, had the potentail power to protect the believers and their families through
the practice of sowing. In this sense, based on the speech given by the pastor, we aim to
identify through linguistic-discursive resources, the possible effects for capturing viewers with
the objective of promoting the sale of the advertised product.. For this, we will resort to the
Semiolinguistic Theory of Discourse proposed by Charaudeau (2019, 2018, 2017). Through
this theoretical and methodological background foundation, it is possible to understand that
every speech act produced by a social subject seeks to produce foreseen effects on the
interlocutor. This research has as a social contribution carrying out a necessary analysis that
aims to demonstrate how the religious discourse can also be used as an inductive way
bytransvesting a knowing of belief as a knowing of knowledge.