Religion and Populism in Brazil : A Critical Discourse Analysis of the electoral campaign of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018

The present study explores the presence of religion in the political field in Brazil through a populist discourse. The aim of this study is to understand how religion is used in populist discourse, contributing to studies regarding populist rhetoric, in terms of the reasons as well as the effects of that. The base of this study is the analysis of the political discourse of the electoral campaign of Jair Bolsonaro, elected President of Brazil in 2018. The Theory of Critical Discourse Analysis or Tridimensional Theory of Norman Fairclough is used in a theoretical and methodological perspective, using the formal features of the discourse texts for explaining how religion is present in the political field. The data consists in the analysis of the videos published in the official YouTube Channel of the candidate during the period of the electoral campaign, considering also the three first speeches after winning the elections. The findings demonstrate that religion is not quantitatively present in the source material, however, the analysis suggests a possibility of the existence of a “religious populism”, since the centrality of religion would make this presence qualitative. This centrality is suggested through the verification of four perspectives, which consist in the presence of religion as Legitimacy of the Presidency; as Formal Content; through the Subjects who participate of the electoral campaign; and in the material form, through the Fundamentalist Content of the discourse. Finally, the study contributes to the field of political rhetoric in a sense of providing a partial analysis of a political discourse that had the power of convincing the largest country of South America, suggesting the reasons and effects it may promote in that society.