Desecrating the Sacred: Linguistic Appropriation of Nagô Expressions and the Articulation of Religious Repression in Salvador, Brazil

Abstract

Comprehensively understanding religious repression requires a critical examination of discursive-linguistic practices, given that language is a semiotic resource for ritual practice and negotiations of religious identity. Language has also been weaponized within colonial domination and religious subjugation because of how religious and linguistic practices intersect. This article explores linguistic appropriation as part of the symbolic and material(ized) violence that represses African-matrix religions. Focusing on Salvador, Brazil, I analyze cases of linguistic-spiritual appropriation wherein commercial industries and evangelical Christians adopt Nagô/Yoruba expressions derived from African-matrix liturgical registers and reshape them to the detriment of their source communities. This investigation highlights how kindred ideological processes, like evangelicalism and the national projects of mestiçagem and democracia racial, become entextualized and reconstituted through discursive processes. It demonstrates the paradox of socially and politically dominant groups co-opting, commodifying, and capitalizing on the very ritual practices and institutions that they restrict, malign, and criminalize.