Reflections about pragmatics and legal literacy from a case of Youtube videos disrespecting afro-brazilian religious cults

Abstract

Assuming that Pragmatics is the area of linguistics that prioritizes the study of the principles that guide human communication processes considering the contexts in which interactions are placed, and that its cognitive-inferential aspects posits that the understanding of the meaning of a statement (whether oral or written) considers the mental and the social circumstances of those who produced it, this paper will use as theoretical concepts some aspects introduced by Sperber and Wilson in their Relevance Theory (1995), such as the definition of “context” as a dynamic psychological construct of assumptions about the world. Considering also that the case study is a consolidated and adequate research methodology to discuss specific situations, we will analyze an episode submitted to a Brazilian Court. In this situation, the intention was to exclude from the internet videos that were discriminatory to practitioners and social practices of African-Brazilian religions, in order to discuss the importance of the introduction of Pragmatics studies, especially of cognitive-inferential trends, in the literacy process of the legal professionals.