Universos de discurso e conceitos de amor na exortação apostólica Amoris Laetitia

Abstract

In 2013, at the beginning of his papacy, Francis announced the conception of a Synod on the Family, realized through two annual assemblies held in 2014 and 2015. Following the synodal congregation, the final report and the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL) were published in 2016. Expectations surrounding AL were so high that the Christian community asserted this document could transform the reality of the Roman Catholic Church (Albuquerque; Araújo Junior, 2021). However, criticism from the religious opposition to the incumbent pontiff's ideas intensified significantly after its release, leading some cardinals to label Francis a heretic, arguing that the content of AL caused disorder in Catholic morality. With this in mind, we propose a study of the contentious AL, focusing on its primary theme (love), through the lens of Linguistics as posited by theorist Eugenio Coseriu, especially concerning the notion of discourse universes (UDs). According to Coseriu (2003), linguistic practices are circumscribed, among other contexts, by UDs (categorized as common experience, science, fantasy, and faith), acting as sets of meaning systems that validate the truth value of statements. Therefore, our goal is to analyze the influence of UDs on the conceptualization of love in AL. This objective involves identifying and describing the linguistic-textual procedures that characterize UDs. For identifying UDs, we consider the distinguished facts, classified through Coseriu's operations of discrimination and delimitation (1979), which forms the basis for our own six textual analysis operations: nomination, realization, delimitation, quantification, situation, and association. Additionally, phenomena such as intertextuality and metaphorical language aided in identifying UDs. As a result, we analyzed 11 concepts of love: patient love, compassionate love, servile love, fair love, amiable love, balanced love, indulgent love, genuine love, confident love, hopeful love, and resilient love. These concepts function as dimensions that integrate the essence of true love discussed by Francis (inspired by the Pauline text in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7). Through a dynamic of juxtaposition and intersection, we identified and interpreted that UDs of faith, common experience, and science (typified in philosophical, legal, psychological, and genetic) contextualize the concepts of love. Through this work, from the exploration of new theoretical perspectives (Coserian Linguistics) and different approaches (from UDs), we contribute to understanding the Roman Catholic religious discourse, and, conversely, we propose an instrument of characterization and identification of UDs that complement to some extent the theoretical positions inherited from Coseriu.