The discourse of love in songs: discursive formations of pain and nostalgia

Abstract

In this work, we take, as theoretical presuppositions, the notion-concept of discursive formation, as proposed by Michel Pêcheux (1997) and based on the article “Palavra de amor” (Word of Love), by Eni Orlandi (1990) to analyze, from the point of view of the French Discourse Analysis, fragments of songs in English and Portuguese languages. The analysis of the songs allowed us to perceive the discursive formations of love as pain or suffering and of love as nostalgia as constitutive formations of texts, revealed by enunciative regularities in operation through linguistic elements and characteristics of the texts. Due to the impossibility of dealing here with all the aspects investigated from the discourse of love, we reiterate the certainty that the notion-concept of discursive formation, as theorized by Pêcheux (1997), is still very productive. Likewise, we reaffirm the productivity of Orlandi's article (1990), despite its almost thirty years of meaning production.