Images and signs in Umbanda s body

• Grant number: 07/04368-1
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: January 01, 2008
• End date: June 30, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: José Francisco Miguel Henriques Bairrão
• Grantee: José Francisco Miguel Henriques Bairrão
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

What is the morphology of the smallest unities of sense in the possession trance of Umbanda’s language? Former research suggests that its expressive elements would be shaped by a combinatory and very elastic interlace of different material supports, such as body movements (kinesics), proprioceptive sensations (kinesthesia), dramatic scripts substantiated in the religious imaginary (pictographs) and muscularly inscribed pictures (gestures). This result appoints that the continuity of this investigation should be held in order to reach the knowledge of the effective composition and delimitation of the intrinsic linguistic morphology process of the possession in umbanda (presumably similar to those trances in other ecstatic popular cults). This research aims to compose an experiment that allows inferring and identifying its morphemes (in large scale inaccessible to the personal conscience of the participants) by creating a procedure that requires it exercise in observational conditions. (AU)