Aspectos ético-legales
8. LIMITACIONES DEL ESTUDIO
To date, there appears to be a lack of linguistic studies focusing on church discourse and its relation to sexuality. From an in-group perspective, there are a number of studies that have considered religion as an identity marker in its intersection with gender (see Jule 2005, 2007), and a few that have done the same in terms of sexuality (e.g. Yip 1999, 2002; Levon 2016). Although not within churches proper, Peterson (2010) considered religion and sexuality from an out-group perspective. In his study, he analysed antigay texts produced by the Family Research Council (or FRC), a conservative Christian non-profit organisation in the United States. Following
Fairclough (2003: 220), he investigated orders of discourse and found that there was a shift from a logic of sin to a logic of deviancy in the representations of gay and lesbian subjects.
However, the majority of research focusing on discourse produced by churches comes from the field of sociology. For example, Dillon (1995) studied the Catholic Church’s institutional legitimation in relation to abortion, as well as cultural differences in this church’s stance about this matter (Dillon 1996).
Due to the lack of linguistic research on church discourse, I here refer to some relevant sociological studies that have considered sexuality. One of these studies is Kowalewski (1990), who analysed a variety of data produced by American Jewish and Christian organisations at a time when religious discussions about AIDS focused primarily on its relation to homosexuality. Due to this, Kowalewski aimed to investigate this relation as reported in church periodicals and official statements related to AIDS. Kowalewski identified three types of responses to the syndrome, which show different stances among and within these religious traditions. The first response, categorised as ‘blaming the victim’, defines AIDS as a divine punishment or the logical consequence of violating ‘natural law’. In these responses, abstinence and heterosexual marital fidelity are suggested as ways to avoid AIDS. The second
response, categorised as ‘embracing the exile’, considers AIDS as a condition that can be avoided, separating it from morality. This response is characterised by calls for government funding for research and medical care, as well as a demand for public education. Finally, a third response labelled ‘helping the victim’ validates the
churches’ moral teachings with medical references, thus reconciling the two previous poles. Here, AIDS is regarded as a public health crisis and as a deterrent to
extramarital sexual behaviour, which is characterised as sinful. Consequently, heterosexual marital monogamy is identified as the best way to prevent AIDS. As Kowalewski identified, this response is not based on the belief that AIDS is God’s punishment on homosexuality or any kind of sin, but it is only related to sin. Also,
texts including this response are often ambivalent, with arguments of the ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ type, where compassion is differentiated from acquiescence. Preventive education is not discussed by representatives of this response, but the government is urged to allocate resources for AIDS research and patient care.
Kowalewski suggests that the groups believe that giving information to prevent AIDS will portray them as condoning sexual activity outside marriage, thus refraining from supporting preventive education.
In another study considering sexuality and religion, Kowalewski (1993) analysed extracts from official Catholic Church documents in the United States that referred to contraception and homosexuality. In this study, Kowalewski refers to how the
Catholic Church aims to maintain organisational stability while surviving and remaining relevant. Due to this, the Church frames its moral pronouncements in language that portrays it as open to the modern world and what is suggested by the natural and social sciences, while also in accordance to the Church’s official values. As Kowalewski notes, the Catholic Church is always responding to changes, being constantly pressured to accommodate to its surroundings, while also seeking to maintain social distance by resisting change. Due to this, Kowalewski argues that the Church compromises with a limited type of accommodation, which he calls firmness
and accommodation, and exemplifies this phenomenon with reference to the Church’s
stance about contraception and homosexuality. For instance, moral evaluations regarding contraception correspond to what Foucault (1973) calls episteme, where moral teachings are based on what is considered to be ‘natural law’. As a
consequence, the role of marriage is considered to be procreation and the education of children, which rules out the use of contraceptives and any sexual encounters outside marriage. However, an official church document addressed to pastoral carers allowed
concessions to them in the application of pastoral care that dealt with contraception. Concerning homosexuality, Kowalewski found that homosexual individuals were portrayed as worthy of care and counselling, but issues of gay sexual relationships were not addressed. This, he asserts, presents the immorality of gay sexual acts as assumed a priori. At the time the study was conducted, the stance of the Church regarding homosexuality was legitimated with reference to Church tradition and the Bible. Additionally, the Church did not allow much room for pastoral compromise in this matter since it recommended that pastoral care for gay people should be
developed with the help of social and medical sciences, provided their beliefs were the same as those of the Church. In other words, advice would inevitably come from those who saw homosexuality as wrong.
Finally, in a study that considers the topic of sexuality within Protestantism, Olson and Cadge (2002) investigated the views of mainline Protestant clergy about
homosexuality in the United States. These researchers conducted interviews with 62 mainline clergy who represented Baptist, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran,
Presbyterian and Methodist churches. Although the interviews did not explicitly ask the clergy about homosexuality, 40 of them spontaneously brought up the topic. The analysis of the interviews allowed Olson and Cadge to identify how the clergy made sense of homosexuality and related topics and allowed them to describe a variety of frames they used to address the topic of same-sex attraction. This revealed that homosexuality was primarily framed in relation to its impact on the churches themselves, as opposed to its relevance for the social context. For example,
homosexuality was frequently framed as a denominational struggle, in relation to the loss of church members, church openness to gay people, gay marriage, gay ordination, and as something difficult to deal with. However, it was also framed in relation to
justice, rights and equality, in terms of its importance, as an overblown phenomenon, in relation to specific events or policies, and compared to other matters. Olson and Cadge consider that the frames identified reveal a pragmatic approach to the topic, where matters such as love, and justice are not central to the churches’ concern about the topic. Also, they explored the language used by the clergy in their discussions about homosexuality. Here, Olson and Cadge found that homosexuality was more frequently discussed in terms of homosexuality proper rather than as a sexuality matter, and equally in the abstract as in relation to people.
As in the previous section, these studies have all focused on the same context, that is the United States. Additionally, since they have analysed how the churches position themselves in front of homosexuality related topics, the studies provide more insights about the churches rather than the topics they discuss. Apart from incorporating a linguistics approach, my study will hopefully contribute by broadening these studies’ perspective as I identify the representations two religious organisations instantiate around a topic, as opposed to their stances. Additionally, I incorporate a context different from the United States, which allows for a better understanding of the reach these organisations have in other places of the world.
3.7. Conclusion
As discussed in this chapter, representations play a role in the production of meaning and culture through language. As such, they are influential in the construction of identity, knowledge, and the social world, organising reality and helping to set norms and conventions. Due to this, representations can influence social attitudes and behaviour. However, their meaning is not fixed, opening the possibility for change. Considering this, the identification of representations is relevant in CDS, which is an interdisciplinary problem-oriented school or research programme that is interested in
investigating the relationship between discourse and society, particularly in contexts in which discourse helps to reproduce domination and inequality. Within CDS, discourse is regarded as both socially constitutive and constituted, playing a similar role to that of representations in the maintenance and reproduction of the social status quo. As this study aims to identify representations around homosexuality, which involves an often-discriminated social group, a critical discourse analysis seems perfectly suited to carry out this task, since CDS provides theoretical insights that allow for an investigation of this topic while considering the relations of power that constrain it. Moreover, CDS has an emancipatory aim, which is an important goal towards which this study aims to contribute. With that in mind, this study analyses the way politicians and the most important religions in Chile talk about LGBTQ+ matters. I chose to analyse parliamentary and church discourse because they represent two powerful groups in society: one that is in charge of deciding which laws are passed and one which is known for outspokenly opposing the passing of those that pertain to gay people.
To the best of my knowledge, there are not many studies that have considered the role of parliamentary and church discourse in the (re)production of LGBTQ+ inequalities in the Chilean context. This study aims to fill that gap and hopefully promote the production of more work in the area, particularly within linguistics. This can be extended to other contexts such as Europe and America in what pertains to church discourse, since there are not many studies that have considered it from a linguistics or CDS perspective.
As I mentioned in the previous pages, I do not follow a specific CDS approach but integrate aspects of three CDS programmes that seemed well-suited to make sense of my findings. These are Reisigl and Wodak’s (2016) DHA, van Leeuwen’s (2008)
framework for the analysis of legitimation, and Fairclough’s (1989; 1992) three- dimensional model for discourse analysis. Through these approaches I am also able to pay special attention to the context in which the types of discourse analysed are embedded and apply these insights to the interpretation and explanation of the findings.
Influenced by corpus-based critical discourse studies such as Baker’s (2004) study of discourses of homosexuality in the British Parliament, as well as the studies
mentioned in section 3.6.1, I decided to incorporate a corpus-based approach to my study and look at keywords and collocates. However, this methodological approach changed along the way. Although I do not obtain collocates and keywords using corpus tools in the end, I do consider frequency of occurrence of concordance lines in the identification of the representations that are included in the analysis, and look at collocates when I name these representations, making sure they are recurrent and form patterns, rather than focusing on examples that occur only once or twice. Additionally, I test some of my findings in a reference corpus, something which is typically done in corpus-based discourse studies. These features of this study, as well as the setting of cut-off points, the rationale behind the selection of data, the fact that I analyse a corpus of data rather than only a few texts, are included as a way to reduce researcher bias, thus addressing important criticisms CDS has received. In the following chapter, I characterise the corpus collection method, the corpora that resulted from this, and the steps that led to the selection of the most appropriate methodological approach to carry out this study.