Aphorization and Religion: circulation of enunciations in the internet

Abstract

In this paper, I aim to analyze the discursive functioning of biblical sentences and proverbs that circulate in the Internet. The central axis of the theoretical-methodological discussions focuses on Dominique Maingueneau’s works, mainly on the concepts of aphorization and hyperenunciator, and on the notion of communication as proposed by Alice Krieg-Planque. The analyses show that, in relation to the functioning of the selected sentences and proverbs, the pragmatic status of the aphorizing utterances is related to the practices of resumption, reformulation and transformation of the enunciations, common to the forms of communication of the Internet and to the religious fi eld, which have their “rules” (in the sense of regularities) of functioning. Thus, there is, on the one hand, restrictions related to the circulation of the enunciations; on the other hand, historical restrictions, which regard the functioning of a given fi eld.