| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this research is to answer the question how prayer, as linguistic utterance, has curative
effectiveness. Knowing why the benzedura rite attached to pray makes operational the therapeutic
healing of cultural origin illnesses. And in that case, the cure of diseases caused by the spell, such as
evil eye, weakness, brokenness, stickleback fallen, and others. In order to answer these questions, this
research is founded on the work How to do things with words, which gave birth to theory of speech
acts of John Austin (1962), and whereby the act of "saying is doing." According to John Austin's
theory, in fact, the symbolic effects of prayer are related to the ritual of prayer and faith, which
produce healing through prayer ritual that is performed by traditional healer, and those who seek them
and believe in her ritual. Notwithstanding this theory was further developed by John Searle (1969)
with the work Speech Acts. Even so this theory of speech acts was flawed; this is why it was expanded
to deal with the various types of linguistic acts whether constative or performative; so all speech acts
have an illocutionary force. That is, the speech acts in the new pragmatic are all performatic acts
(happy or unhappy according to Austin). The performance of language in this new pragmatic was
conceptualized by several authors as Derrida, Rajagopalan, and Paul Ottoni, among others. In this new
pragmatic performance of the language which was conceptualized initially by Austin and later by
several authors as Derrida, Rajagopalan, Paul Ottoni, among others. In fact, the performativity of
language is what determines through locutionary act. In performativity (speech-action), the subject
(self), to perform an act of specific speech is not enough by himself to perform the action, but only if
he is the right guy for this. It is therefore with this in mind that this investigation will chase to
apprehend the symbolic effectiveness of prayer. As such this paper aims to identify the symbolic
effects of prayer on the suffering client, from the perspective of 'symbolic effectiveness' of Lévi-
Strauss, in accordance with the performativity of Austin; namely the prayer is a performatic speech
act, so it is an act of effectively speech against socially bounded diseases (diseases arising spell). John
Austin's theory points out that, in fact, the symbolic effects of prayer are related to the ritual of
benzedura and faith, and they produce healing, which it is achieved by the action of rezadeiras .
The methodology used in this study was the systematic or bibliographical review, which has as its
premise set up a survey of the state of art in pragmatic. Finally, a holistic health perspective, the prayer
can be used as complementarity between therapeutic approaches with a different logic such as
biomedicine, among others. The prayer as symbolic efficacy is a healing instrument used by
rezadeiras (Brazilian women healers) as a result of the northeastern Brazilian culture. It should and
can be used according to the sociocultural context. Indeed, what it should be done is to align these two
systems because both are products of Brazilian culture and all take care of healthcare of the people. | eng |
