Lexicul religios în discursul elitelor politice românești din Transilvania anului 1918

1 February 2010


Authors
Valer Moga
Pages
239-252
Abstract

This text represents the continuation of an ampler research programme out of which a detailed study has already resulted1. By virtue of methodological continuity, the new vocabulary is investigated with means created by newer generations belonging to the French school of speech analysis. A quantitative determination applied over a corpus which was constituted ad hoc, evidences the fact that in the political speech of the national Romanian leaders from Transylvania, in the second decade of the XXth century, the religious vocabulary is consistent and diverse, following closely that constructed around the concept of nation. Analysis cannot limit only to noticing this reality, but serves the purpose of identifying it determinations of cultural and politic degree. Moreover, antecedents beginning with at least moment 1848 may be identified diacronically. It is not enough interpretation to invoke the role of church in the national political action and percentage of clerics in the Romanian political class of time. Obviously, these data cannot be minimalized. Orthodox and Greek-Catholic hierarchs had a very well defined position within gallery of Romanian orators of that time. Yet, the nationalist political speech had and has, within succession of generations, an important conservative, irrational level, where we naturally find syntagms such as: “the new Messiah of human freedom”2, “completion of times”, “sun of justice”, “the ressurection day” etc. Utterances and syntagms belonging to this semantic area are found in the speech of laic speakers, just as numerous as those from clerics’ oratory. Often, such realities entitled political scientists and historians to speak about political religion not only in the context of politic extremes, but that of nationalist political speech. 

Keywords
speech analysis; religious vocabulary; nationalist political speech; semantic area; political religion