Forum Linguístico is an academic journal launched in 1998 by the Linguistics Graduate Program of the Federal University of Santa Catarina. With a quarterly periodicity, the journal conveys debates concerning all fields from both Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Our aim is to publish new research, be it theoretical or applied, in the field of language and language teaching. We publish the work of contributors from Brazil and abroad written in Portuguese, Spanish or English.
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística - UFSC
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Foreign Policy and Polarization: a case study on the Brazilian Diplomatic Discourse
This article seeks to investigate the frequency and the manner in which the so-called Rhetoric of Culture Wars affects the Brazilian diplomatic discourse. Part of a broader research, which includes 20 years of official speeches by Brazilian foreign ministers from the first Lula government to Bolsonaro, this publication focuses on the case of Celso Amorim, and how the diplomat adopted or not the constants of the Rhetoric of the Culture Wars; as well as whether he is distanced or not, and how often to the traditional Brazilian diplomatic discourse, guided by universalism, autonomy and desire for international insertion. The theoretically pre-established constants or variables served as a parameter to catalogue the speeches in a spreadsheet, providing information for the crossing of data that could answer the research questions. We observed that Amorim did not encompass the constants of the Rhetoric of Culture Wars, despite having clearly leaned to the left of the political discourse. In addition, the Chancellor proved to be consonant, qualitatively and quantitatively, to what is meant by traditional Brazilian diplomatic discourse.
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Welcome International Migrants in Marechal Cândido Rondon (Paraná): language actions and policies under developmen
This research focuses on the welcoming of refugees and international migrants in Marechal C. Rondon (MCR), border of Paraguay, in Paraná. In 2022, there were more than two thousand people in this situation in the city, with more intense South-South and North-South migration movements (Baeninger, 2018). The state documents that are part of the host policies found in the municipality are discussed and two actions aimed at teaching Portuguese to speakers of other languages are described. The reflections are based on interpretivist perspective. The theoretical basis is based of Applied Linguistics, in its INdisciplinary aspect (Moita Lopes, 2006) with a vision of transdisciplinary and plurilingual welcoming (ANUNCIAAÇÃO, 2017; Bizon; Camargo, 2018). The analyzes show the need for integrated and continuous policies for the population originating from crisis migration, with the creation of listening spaces for the inclusion of these groups in the planning and implementation of these actions, such as language courses.
The role of Foreign Languages in Proficiency Exams of Graduate Programs in Brazil’s Central-West Region: A Study on Language Policy
This study aimed to investigate the roles occupied by foreign languages in the proficiency exams required by Stricto Sensu Graduate Programs, evaluated by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, in the field of Education, at universities located in Brazil’s Central-West region. The research follows a qualitative and documentary approach, grounded in the theoretical framework of critical language policy. Data were collected through the analysis of institutional documents – such as admission calls, internal regulations, and normative guidelines – retrieved from the Sucupira Platform and university websites. The analysis revealed the centrality of the English language in selection processes, reflecting linguistic ideologies and power dynamics linked to academic internationalization. Although other languages such as Spanish and French are occasionally accepted, English maintains a hegemonic status, constituting an implicit language policy that reinforces inequalities in access to and retention in graduate education. This study contributes to the discussion on the impact of language requirements in academia and highlights the need for more inclusive and multilingual policies in Brazilian higher education.
For a situated perspective on unlearning: notes from the periphery
This article theorizes unlearning as a way in which subjects seek to disentangle themselves from colonial and patriarchal knowledge formations, highlighting the political and affective work involved in moving away from dominant ideologies. The empirical basis for this formulation is an educational and political practice I followed as an ethnographer and allied linguist in the Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro. It focuses on the third edition of Faveladoc, a documentary filmmaking course offered in 2021 by the local NGO Raízes em Movimento to young residents of the neighborhood. The article analyzes a class dedicated to discussions of gender, race, and sexuality in a militarized context. Theoretically, it engages with perspectives on unlearning developed by authors from the so-called Global South, who emphasize the situated and often ambivalent nature of distancing oneself from hegemonic ideologies. The analysis focuses on how students responded to the perspective brought by the instructor. In interaction, students and teacher problematized their lived experiences, recognized internalized forms of violence, and challenged the recurring association between Blackness and suffering. Attentive to dynamics of (in)security and digital mediation, the article ultimately suggests that the classroom can be reimagined as a site of activism, collective critique, and epistemic experimentation—a space that unsettles dominant narratives and rehearses alternative futures from the periphery.
Language Policies for Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) and for the Deaf Community(Ies) in Brazil
In this paper, we propose to survey, identify, and analyze the official language policies at the national level aimed at Libras and the Deaf population currently in force in Brazil. Through consultation with several federal public agencies, we classified the policies and actions mentioned in the following categories: status, corpus, acquisition, and structuring language policies (Kloss, 1968; Cooper, 1997 [1989]; Barbosa da Silva, 2024). Subsequently, analyzing these policies, we realized that most of them are status and acquisition policies. Corpus and structuring policies are fewer in number and more recent. With this, we conclude that Brazil still faces many challenges in guaranteeing linguistic rights for the Deaf Community(s), despite continuous advances, with resistance to setbacks, since the approval of Law No. 10.436/2002.
About the sequestration of a national symbol, symbolic violence and hostility during the 2022 Brazilian Elections
This paper analyzes a common occurrence during the 2022 Presidential election campaign: the use of the national flag superimposed on car hoods. The objective is to examine this occurrence as a type of violent and hostile enunciation that relates to fundamental aspects of the semantics of Bolsonaro’s discourse, such as the encouragement of eliminating opponents. To do this, we first relate this discourse to some characteristics of fascism by recovering speeches and symbolic acts of the president Bolsonaro in which these characteristics became evident. Furthermore, we argue that, by recovering more specific statements from Bolsonaro about the flag and the elimination of opponents, the use of the national symbol represents the recuperation of this discourse and a symptom of being subjected to it.
The structuralist Legacy: Saussurean Linguistics And its projections in French Semiotics
This article aims to present a theoretical review of the linguistic phenomenon from the perspective of the structural approach to language, known as Structuralism, highlighting its significance over the decades and demonstrating its continued applicability and relevance in contemporary studies on language and linguistics. A particular focus will be placed on its direct relationship with the development of French Semiotics. Although Structuralism has led to various branches within modern Linguistics, this discussion will be limited to the Structuralism developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, given that he granted language a unique status and established fundamental principles for the constitution of Linguistics as a scientific discipline within the modern scientific framework. Thus, this study will examine the Saussurean dichotomies that underpin this theoretical model, namely: langue and parole, signifier and signified (with special emphasis on this pair, as it serves as the foundation for the aforementioned semiotic approach), syntagm and paradigm, and synchrony and diachrony. Furthermore, this article intends to provide an overview of the historical progression of linguistic studies up to the present, with particular attention to the developments introduced by Hjelmslev's Glossematics and Greimasian Semiotics.
The music spoken in the songs: what do you hear?
In this article I discuss two songs in which the composers make present vocally the musicality of a certain way of speaking, although located outside the linguistic community to which it refers. This is how I hear the song of the duo Kleiton and Kledir singing the compositions Deu pra ti and Nem pensar. I compare the melodic pattern of each of them, trying to find a point where the combination of lyrics, melody and rhythm expresses the spoken word that insinuates itself through the voice. My objective is to demonstrate analytically, through the use of concepts proposed in enunciation theory and discourse analysis, that prosodic features echo the musicality of the Portuguese spoken in Porto Alegre.
Learning English Through Digital Storytelling and Virtual Exchange in Professional and Technological Education
TThis study aimed to discuss how a digital storytelling activity (Robin, 2016; Vicencio; Vicencio, 2022; Schaefer, 2024a) facilitated the learning of English at Instituto Federal Catarinense. In this qualitative approach research (Patton, 2002), narratives were analyzed from experience reports, through which students had the opportunity to put forward their impressions concerning the activity, and a semi-structured interview. Data analysis showed that the activity provided opportunities for: (a) overcoming challenges and transformation, and (b) socialization among students. Based on the results, it can be stated that the application of digital stories and projects involving virtual exchange is a suitable medium for students willing not only to learn English, but also to engage in interactions with people of other languages and cultures.
The Press Release genre in Academic Literacy practices in Higher Education
The current article presents and analyzes an academic literacy experience with a press release in two classes of the Language and Literature course at a Brazilian federal university. Additionally, it analyzes the genre itself produced from the didactic practice. The didactic experience was investigated according to the Academic Literacies approach developed by Lea; Street (1998; 2014). Next, three press releases written by the students are described, seeking to identify their generic characteristics, taking into account Bakhtin's (2003 [1952-1953]) dialogic proposal and Charles Bazerman's (2020) socio-interactive perspective. The press release proposal considered the three academic literacies models, not being restricted to study skills and academic socialization, but making academic writing more critical and productive with the academic literacies model. It was possible to perceive that the compositional structure, thematic content and the verbal style dialogue with both academic and journalistic discourse, seeking a balance between them to suit the largely non-specialized audience of the press release. It was also found that, in terms of function, the genre involves actions such as: informing, disseminating, persuading and, perhaps to a lesser extent, (re)affirming scientific authority, influencing people's ways of acting and thinking.
Ii don’t engage in paid encounters! I facilitate pleasurable meetings”: experiential discursive ethé and male prostitution on the Garoto com Local
Although male prostitution is still reduced to a sexual act and a ritual of body exhibition, I embark on the investigation of the role of discursive images projected around the affective-sexual experiences established among participants in the desirability regime mediated by fees, which unfold in multiple directions. Thus, I analyze the discursive constitution modes of self-images, discursive ethos, of male escorts on the "Garoto com local" website, comparing a corpus of 14 profiles. From a theoretical standpoint grounded in the notion of discursive ethos (Maingueneau, 1997, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2018) and studies on prostitution (Cruz, 2022). Through the analyses, it was possible to verify that the experiential images orchestrated by male escorts in a regime of enunciative-discursive volatilities, simultaneously give rise to more stable ethos (compassionate, sexually liberated, naughty, and intelligent) and hybrid ethos. In conclusion, the functioning of experiential discursive ethos unveils the plurality of modes in realizing prostitution in its subjectivity and desirability unfoldings, aiming to situate participants in the prostitution scene and individualize them among the coexisting male escorts on the site.
Beautiful to die, beautiful to live: conceptual integration, metaphor and humor
An advertisement for "Sinaf Seguros" (a business organization in Rio de Janeiro), posted on March 1, 2019, is analyzed, consisting of the image of Pão de Açúcar and Enseada de Botafogo and the expression pretty to die for, both in highlighted, used as a life insurance sales strategy. This expression is preceded by “Congratulations, Rio” and followed by “by the way ...” and the Sinaf logo. Based on the descriptive-exploratory approach, the theories of Extended Conceptual Metaphor (KÖVECSES, 2020) and Conceptual Integration (FAUCONNIER; TURNER, 2002) were taken as a framework, among other concepts from Cognitive Semantics, theories on humor production and descriptive resources for multimodal productions of Visual Design Grammar (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2001, 2006). We postulate a visual composition structured in a vertical triptych, whose conceptualization reveals the contextualized metaphors SINAF IS A SAFE TRAJECTORY AND SINAF/RIO IS A PERSON.
Challenges, differences and perspectives over an epidemic
This study aims to investigate the discourse of an HIV campaign in Brazil, produced by Ministério da Saúde, which has four participants who discovered the HIV diagnosis at the beginning of the epidemic, as well as understand and discuss how they reacted to the diagnosis, whether they talk about differences in terms of advances over the epidemic, and whether the discourse analyzed in the campaign contributes to transforming the stigma that triggers prejudice and discrimination. The study was carried out following a qualitative research methodology and the data were discussed in the light of the theoretical-analytical approach of Critical Discourse Analysis and of the concept of biopolitics. The results show that, although the participants talk about different challenges they have faced since the beginning of the epidemic and its biomedical advances, overall, the discourses analyzed demonstrate the focus on the drug treatment as exclusive to dealing with the epidemic, leaving complex subjectivities that affect human beings diminished by the biomedical discourse, when biopolitics comes into play. Therefore, the discourse analyzed in the campaign did not contribute robustly enough to transform the stigma that triggers prejudice and discrimination.
Linguistic analysis practices in mother tongue teaching: presentation of a proposal for the elaboration of school exercises for high school
In recent years, the teaching of mother tongue has been the subject of debates to review postures in the promotion of pedagogical practices more concerned with the development of different literacies. Many didactic works and proposals were developed and, in a certain way, had repercussions in the classroom, mainly in what concerns reading and writing. However, there are difficulties in working with linguistic knowledge in a way that is more applied to the social use of language, which can be seen in some teaching materials and in the practice of teachers. Thus, from a social-interactionist perspective of language, this article aims to contribute to the existing debate by presenting a proposal for the development of school exercises for the practice of linguistic analysis in high school, in which grammatical phenomena/elements and their effects of meaning are analyzed, without being bound to nomenclatures or classifications. Developed in this way, practices linguistic analysis contributes to the construction of critical subjects who, through systematic reflection, use the resources of language to act in their various historical and social contexts.
Linguistic analysis skills in the Portuguese Language component of the BNCC for high school: an analysis from the viewpoint of Systemic-Functional Linguistics
This research analyzes the skills of Portuguese Language curriculum component, considering the nature of the processes (cognitive processes), the nature of the participants (objects of knowledge) and the circumstances (learning context) by the transitivity system of Systemic-Functional Linguistics. For this, we reviewed the concepts and principles of the language practice called Linguistic Analysis Practice (Geraldi, 1997; 2011 [1984]; Franchi, 1992 [1987]) and the foundations of Systemic-Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) guiding the analysis. The universe is constituted by the Common National Curricular Base for High School, specifically by the sections dedicated to the curricular component Portuguese Language, and the corpus comprises 11 skills that contemplate the practice of linguistic analysis. The results show that most skills are formed by cognitive mental processes, which can lead to teaching and learning processes that are not very focused on social action; by objects of knowledge that are not very varied, which weakens the proposal of curricular complexification and flexibility; by modifiers that prioritize circumstances of medium and purpose, resulting in a structure that largely erases the learning contexts focused on texts and discursive genres.
Syntactic and Semantic aspects of ‘perigar’ verb
‘Perigar’ is a verb that appears in several constructions of BP, such as ‘periga chover’, and its grammatical features were not yet described. In order to fill this gap, we provide a syntactic description following syntactic cartography (CINQUE, 1999; 2006; DRUBIG, 2001; TSAI, 2015) and a semantic description following formal semantics (KRATZER, 1981; 1991; CONDORAVDI, 2002; von FINTEL, 2006; von FINTEL; HEIM, 2011; HACQUARD, 2011). To provide such a description, we have adopted two methodological procedures: (i) collecting and analyzing spontaneous data from Facebook and (ii) applying syntactic and semantic tests using the introspective method. In the first step, we were able to get one hundred sentences with the verb ‘perigar’ which were analyzed syntactically and semantically in order to formulate some hypothesis about this verb. In order to test them, we have done some syntactic and semantic tests using the introspective method. The syntactic tests’ goal was to verify if it was an auxiliary modal verb or if it was a lexical verb. The semantic tests’ goal was to verify which aspects were lexicalized. The syntactic tests have shown that it can be considered an unaccusative lexical verb lexical. On the other hand, the semantic tests have shown that it resembles modal verbs in some aspects since it takes only a proposition as an argument and has an existential quantification force, but it also resembles lexical verbs in some aspects since the modal base is lexicalized in the verb.
Junto, juntos, juntinhos and the like: semantic and morphosyntactic properties of an anti-distributive item in Brazilian Portuguese
In this paper, we analyze some morphosyntactic properties of ‘junto’ in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In order to that, we first provide a brief introduction to the possible morphological variations and syntactic positions of the expression. In the second section, we revisit the work of Basso and Araújo (in press) on the possible interpretations that the ‘junto’ can have in BP. In the third section, we present a morphosyntactic analysis of ‘junto’ and investigate how its morphology and syntactic position can influence different readings for the sentences modified by the term. Finally, in the Conclusion, we summarize some conclusions and point out some of the open questions about the expression that deserve to be studied.
The documentary synopsis genre at olimpíada de língua portuguesa Escrevendo o Futuro (OLPEF): a didatic-pedagogical proposal focusing on practice of critically based linguistic analysis
From the perspective of Critical Genre Analysis (GCA) and the proposals for theoretical-methodological articulation that make up the Practice of Critically Based Linguistic Analysis (PALC), this article analyzes the genre of Documentary synopsis and presents a didactic-pedagogical proposal for the first and second year of high school in the context of the Portuguese Language Olympics Writing the Future (OLPEF). The research began with a Critical Genre Analysis of one synopse that was finalist in the competition in 2019. At this stage, the adequacy of the text to the sociocommunicative purposes, the rhetorical organization and the lexical-grammatical realization were explored. The results of this study guided the development of a pedagogical proposal, the aim of which is to integrate statements that discuss the text genre through metalinguistic, epilinguistic and sociodiscursive activities.
#Cancelada: a culture of boycott conveyed by impoliteness estrategies
This research aims to analyze how internet users, in online-mediated interactions on the social network X (formerly Twitter), employed linguistic-discursive resources that would suggest the cancellation of the artist Thaila Ayala, by reducing interlocutive distance and constructing metapragmatics of impoliteness. In the theoretical scope, we assume that cancel culture involves impolite language actions at the micro (impoliteness strategies), macro (establishment of violent metapragmatics), and meso levels (regulation of interlocutive instances for violence), guided by the intersection of Interactional Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics. In the methodological scope, we selected one post from G1 and seven comments related to the cancellation of the artist Thaila Ayala, under the guidance of (N)etnography and Critical Discourse Analysis. In the analytical scope, we observed that irony, derogatory rhetorical questions, pejorative adjectives, distinct insinuations, and various grammatical-textual uses, as violent linguistic-discursive strategies, emerged from a (meta)discursive struggle between the artist (cancelled) and the internet users (cancellers), forming a unit of meaning that framed the cancellation as a kind of pursuit of social justice.
Review: Les discours meurtriers aujourd’hui
Review: Turpin, Béatrice; Patiño-Lakatos, Gabriela; Aubry, Laurence. (dir.). Les discours meurtriers aujourd’hui. Colloque de Cerisy. Bruxelles: Peter Lang Verlag, 2022. Collection Comparatisme et Société. V. 44.
Presentation: Dossier Narratology and its Interfaces: Health and Education
Autobiographical written narratives and the resignification of suffering relationships with reading and writing in Higher Education
Anchored in a social and historical perspective, it is assumed that reading and writing practices are dialogical and that the constitution of readers and writers depends on the quality of interactions mediated by and from written language. Literacy conditions, collectively and individually, are continually established as part of an orchestra that brings together meanings, voices, and values ​​in a specific time and space. School/university represents an agency of literacy, where discourses circulate aiming at the production, reproduction, and dissemination of academic knowledge. This study aims to analyze the "suffering" relationships established with reading and writing by academics, as well as to discuss the potential of bibliographic written narratives in the resignification of such relationships. This qualitative study was conducted through the analysis of biographical reports written by academics as documents and sources for research. It was evidenced in this research that the problems and achievements of academics, facing academic literacy, occurred through the recognition of the status of the other's word and the fact that it requires active comprehension and a responsive-active attitude. The narratives resonate with the construction and reconstruction of knowledge that emerged from encounters with singularity and with others. The line of construction and reconstruction of this knowledge is anchored to processes of subjectivization and self-awareness, considering, in this bias, the literacies involved in the students' trajectories.
Educational Monitoring in a hospital environment narrative of teachers in Initial Training
This work presents an analysis of the insertion of the curricular component “Educational Service in a Hospital Environment” in the initial training of teachers in the Degrees of Graduation English and Libras, at a public University in the Brazilian semi-arid region. The research, of a qualitative nature, is characterized as a case study and analyses the impacto f this componente on initiel teacher training, based on the narration of six students about their experiences in that subject. In the methodological path, we situate the contexto in which the research was developed. Next, we highlight the notions of inicial training, scenario and monitoring. The analyzes show that the curricular componentstudied is fundamental in the training of future teachers. We conclude that in addition to teaching in a hospital environment, encountering educational support in hospital classes makes future teachers more autonomous in sharing knowledge in learning and teaching spaces.
Narrating the anguish of being vegan in a non-vegan world
The autobiographical narrative of the anguish and pain of being vegan in a non-vegan world, similarly to other painful situations, can be characterized by some discursive specificities due to the influence of strong contextual emotions involved. Based on the theoretical concepts of hardening and narrative loop (Vasconcelos, 2022) the objective of this article is to describe and analyze these discursive specificities through a case study of an autobiographical narrative of the anguish of being vegan in a non-vegan world – vystopia. The awakening to veganism is characterized as the participant´s port of passage creating the boundaries between the before and the after in her life. While pouring out her feelings she become capable of comprehending her experience and her capacity of surviving and learning lessons from the pain. The construction of the narrative positioning also counts with several elements such as circumstantiality, value, aspectuality, and repetition.
The plot of narratives in the speech Therapy Clinic: a strategy for unraveling medicalization
The aim of this research is to analyze life narratives in the field of Speech Therapy. The methodology adopted was a case study and involved a 9-year-old girl with learning difficulties. The child's story was narrated by her grandmother and mother during an interview at a clinic-school. The data were analyzed based on the studies of Mota (2013), Bakhtin, and Vygotsky. The results reveal that the narrators link events aiming to explain aspects that, by deviating from what would be "expected," highlight the child's difference. These narratives bear traces of the dominant medical practice, as the child's characteristics were interpreted as symptomatic manifestations of learning disorders, attention deficits, and auditory processing. The narratives of the grandmother and mother converge regarding the internalization of the diagnoses received by the child, as theoretically these would explain the supposed cause for the "challenges" depicted in the complaint. It is concluded that the voices mapped during the narrative analysis serve as a vehicle to legitimize the phenomenon of medicalization.
The dialogue meeting: a genre of narrative discourse as a methodological possibility for data generation on researches in human sciences
There are several researches in human sciences that reduce subjects to mere participants and consider language as monological. The work presented here goes in the opposite direction, when presenting, in the light of Bakhtin’s perspective, the dialogue meeting genre as a possibility for data generation in researches in human sciences, in which the researcher also constitutes as research subject, adopts his active responsive position, considering the alterity and the dialogism found for this methodological possibility. Here, it is based on data from a research that sought to answer the questions about reading conceptions of literacy teachers.
Photography in the production of narratives: between the verbal and the non-verbal, between the visible and the non-visible
The aim of this article is to understand the place that photography has occupied in the production of memories and narratives today. To do so, it starts from a relationship between research on photography developed in the Brazilian Social Sciences and more recent research on memory and narrative. The different media (paper and screens), the forms of archiving and circulation used in both private and institutional contexts, as well as class and gender differences are also of fundamental importance for understanding the use of photography as an essential part of the construction of memories and narratives, whether individual or collective. Starting from the articulation between the verbal and the non-verbal, between the visible and the non-visible, it analyses the forms of use and cultural transmission of photography, the strategies used for its selection, archiving and disposal and, with this, the different demands surrounding photographic production and recording, as well as the celebratory spaces used to legitimate the work of photographers: museums, galleries, publishers, awards, and the forms of exhibition made possible by the internet. Between the private and collective uses of photography, the most distinct "places of memory" are articulated and, consequently, the most diverse disputes around a "narrative" applied to the photographic image.
Interview with Martine Lani-Balyle
Apresentação |Gênero, silenciamento(s) e resistência pela Análise de Discurso Materialista
Enunciation and silence: gossip and its subjects
In this work I consider gossip as one of the historical forms of enunciation, constituted in the ideological clash and in the contradiction of subject-positions in the interdiscourse. As a historically produced language practice, gossip is configured from a place of enunciation, a way of saying and a specific form of circulation, as an effect of the encounter between an actuality (the concrete conditions of discourse production) and a memory (the functioning of interdiscourse as a complex totality with dominant of discursive formations, which establishes the conditions for the enunciation of formulations). In this article I describe the functioning of the enunciative practice of gossip and its historical course and, based on this analysis, I develop a reflection on the notion of place of enunciation and its relationship with silence.
Cheating the language: the discursive functioning of the misconception in the novel Florim, by Ruth Ducaso
In this article, we take as analysis material the novel Florim, written by Luciany Aparecida and signed as Ruth Ducaso. The 2020 publication implodes logical certainties related to authorship, ideological dominance taken as natural, and language. Our object of analysis is the insurgency of the misconception as a knowledge that governs the literary discourse. As the point Where the real of language, this is, the impossible, and the real of history, this is, the contradiction, meet, the misconception works systematically in Florim as a principle that insists on not closing the work, not giving it a unique sense. The use of aesthetic signatures, in this way, exposes a real of authorship as decentered, constituted by an irreducible heterogeneity. The peculiar way in which the interdiscourse affects the signifying chain leads to the sight of another political and historical scene, invisible in the social formation. Finally, cheating with language, as far as the lexicon, semantics and syntax are concerned, proves to be the material bases of the misconception, as it appears in the literary discourse.
Indigenous Women in Contemporary Brazilian Indigenous Literature: Voices, Struggles, and Feminisms
This article aims to analyze, from the perspective of Pecheutian Discourse Analysis, the processes of voice constitution present in the narratives of indigenous women, especially in spaces of power, about indigenous feminisms, and to investigate their relation to the discursive formations that appear in the literary work of indigenous female authorship titled Nãna and the Clay Pots, written by Chirley Maria Pankará, which is part of the anthology Originárias: A Feminine Anthology of Indigenous Literature (DORRICO; NEGRO, 2023). We thus seek to understand, albeit initially, the processes of subjectivation in indigenous female literary authorship and briefly reflect on their articulations with the indigenous women's movement.
Vodun priestesses and queens at the crossroads of discursive memories: from the Inquisition to Carnival
The historical struggles of black movements for places of enunciation (Zoppi-Fontana, 1999; Autor 2, Autor 1, Modesto, 2023), especially of black women for memory (Autor 1, 2015), displace meanings when they seek to (re)signify the past, (re)signifying the present and the future. Inspired by the statements of Simas and Rufino (2018) and Martins (2021), who put forward the idea that wisdom, memories and experiences are imbued in bodies, we ask: what is repeated in the body and voice in an archive made up of Inquisition proceedings against African women who held leadership positions in vodun cults in Minas Gerais in the 18th century (Rodrigues, Maia, 2023)? How is this memory updated in the texts about/in Viradouro's parade at the 2024 Rio Carnival about the history of female warriors from the Dahomey kingdom initiated by vodun priestesses? In our work, we discursively analyze the memories of/about African vodun priestesses in processes of the Inquisition and in contemporary cultural productions in a relationship with the body conceived, at the same time, as a signifying materiality, as a discursive formulation, as knowledge. Inserted in the carnival space, a typically Brazilian expression of struggle and celebration, our aim is to make a reading gesture that demonstrates a place of signification for the body in movement.
“Preta Fermina”: slavery, naming, and legal tensions on the Brazil-Uruguay border
This article examines the naming of “preta Fermina” through the Auto de perguntas, a document included in criminal case nº 413 from 1854. The objective is to contribute to a deeper theorization about the border, grounded in Discourse Analysis (DA). The text proposes a discursive analysis that problematizes issues related to proper names and legal tensions at the Brazil-Uruguay border during a specific period in the 19th century, marked by the abolition of slavery in Uruguay and its persistence in Brazil. In this process of subject formation, the border emerges as a contradictory space, situated on the delicate threshold between freedom and slavery.
Analysis of Women's Discourses in Prison Context: Discourse and Social Reproduction
The present study analyzes the discourses of women in a prison context from the perspective of Materialist Discourse Analysis (MDA) in relation to Social Reproduction Theory (SRT). Grounded in historical materialism and Marxist feminist critique, the study seeks to understand the meanings of reproductive labor produced by women in situations of incarceration, paying attention to how gender, race, and class oppressions are reproduced within the Brazilian social formation. To this end, the research analyzes discourses of incarcerated women at the Madre Pelletier Women’s Prison, one extracted from an interview conducted in 2013 and another from a text written during the 2022 pandemic. The analysis reveals how female incarceration is linked to the organization of social reproduction under neoliberalism. The signifier "bag" emerges as a central discursive element, signifying not only survival within prison but also the interdependence between oppression and subjectivation in the functioning of the prison system.
No act without scene, no scene without theater: A contribution of the materialism of the imaginary to the relationship between discourse and history
There are two purposes to this article. On the one hand, to introduce, regarding some open debates on discourse theory, theoretical elements of the problematic field that we call materialism of the imaginary. Secondly, showing the way in which, within this perspective, the category of phantasm, coming from psychoanalysis, allows us to move towards a materialist elaboration of the real as an overdetermined singular conjunction and the effectiveness of its inscription in the processes (plexuses) that exceed it. This double question is usually indicated through the concept of performativity. Finally, I propose that the task of a materialism of the imaginary towards a theory of discourse is also to develop a notion of performativity in accordance with its central axioms. Along this path, the still inaccurate category of phantasm also shows much potential.
Discourse Analysis and Psychoanalysis: A Biunivocal Relation?
This article proposes a critical investigation of the relation between discourse analysis and psychoanalysis, based on the hypothesis that this relationship is not biunivocal. This means that there is no equivalence between how discourse analysis relates to psychoanalysis and how psychoanalysis relates to discourse analysis. Taking as a starting point a reflection on the place of psychoanalysis in Michel Pêcheux's thought, the central objective is to examine the theoretical and heuristic specificities that characterize the relationship between these two fields. It seeks to identify both the tensions and the possibilities of articulation, avoiding reductionisms or superficial instrumentalizations. From this perspective, the article problematizes the premises and risks of a possible homology between the fields, highlighting the elements that prevent a direct transposition of categories and approaches. Finally, the study explores pathways for a more consistent and productive epistemological articulation between the two areas.
An interview with Warren Montag: notes on Althusser, Pêcheux, and discourse analysis
Interview
In the ruins of progress: a misreading of Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
The article argues that, in the era of the Anthropocene, Jorge Amado’s novel Gabriela, Cravo e Canela can be subject to an ironic reinterpretation that subverts its traditional Marxist and liberal readings. The opposition between Colonel Ramiro Bastos and Mundinho Falcão no longer represents the well-known clash between tradition and modernity but instead symbolizes the tension between two modes of social life: one rooted in the community and natural environment (the garden), and the other driven by economic globalization (the dredging of the harbor). Though flawed, this reinterpretation reflects an atmosphere marked by melancholy and disillusionment, in which economic progress is no longer seen as a vector of development but rather as an agent of environmental destruction and the erosion of authentic social forms of life.
(Counter)Stories and Discourse Analysis: Neomaterialist Fabulations
The article, inscribed in the proposal of a archaeogenealogical neo-materialist analysis of discourses which receives contributions from the material-ontological turn, agential realism and post-humanisms, speculates on the productivity of a narrative-fabulative methodology for the analytical work of discursive practices in the face of a diffracted and dilated understanding of discourse to encompass the intra-action between the human and the other-than-human, between materiality and language. To do that, a discussion on the problem of the voice in linguistic-discursive studies is undertaken, and stories of the voice in the face of gender and sexuality dissidence are briefly narrated.
Nostalgia and Melancholy Through the Lens of Science
The text explores some aspects of the history of nostalgic and melancholic feelings, along with the definitions left by psychiatry for mental pathologies. The period analyzed primarily focuses on the industrial societies of the late 19th century and the early 20th century, when there was an increase in medical attention to a series of disorders – whose names include “nervous diseases”, “neurasthenia”, “melancholia”, and “lipemania”. Examples from Portuguese psychiatry will be highlighted, as well as the old connection between melancholia and saudade. The general premise of the text is that the impacts of human activity on the planet intensify feelings of loss of temporal and spatial references. Thus, the Anthropocene era would be closely related to the fostering of nostalgic feelings.
Intra-action, interaction and an expanded diatopic hermeneutics: following things, bodies and repertoires in situated knowledge devices
The multiple debates on new materialisms, among other aspects, have pointed to the need to adjust the focus in the field of humanities, from verbal language and the dynamics of constitution of the representational to the multiple semioses and the dynamics of constitution of the non-representational. The epistemological-ontological-ethical angle proposed by Karen Barad's agential realism (Barad, 2007) points to the impossibility of separating ethics, ontology and epistemology in scientific practice and in the production of knowledge. In her perspective human and non-human beings and other beings are not pre-existing entities but co-constitute their own existences and the different elements of their worlds as materialized actions. Considering this approach, we propose here to reflect on two ethnographic, or rather experiential, exercises that help us to understand the modes of mutual configuration of subjects and processes of materialized co-construction are triggered by different objects (Budach; Kell; Patrick, 2015). The first exercise arises from a series of biographical projects with immigrant women in Portugal, developed in an interdisciplinary and collaborative way (Keating, 2009; Keating; Solovova, 2011; Lechner, 2015; Keating, 2019). The second exercise is based on the development of an academic mobility project built according to the framework of Encontros de Saberes (Carvalho; Vianna, 2020), with the aim of bringing a master of the traditional art of jongo from Brazil to South Africa (Carneiro, 2016).
Fabulations of the anthropocene in Contemporary Brazilian Literature in three books: Corpos benzidos em metal pesado, by Pedro Augusto Baía; Erva Brava, by Paulliny Tort; and O gosto amargo dos metais, by Prisca Augustoni
This article proposes some directions and questions on how to think, analyze, and understand some images of the Anthropocene produced in literature and, more specifically, in contemporary Brazilian literature. By bringing the notion of dispositif (Foucault, 2005), coloniality (Quijano, 2005), decolonial ecology (Ferdinand, 2022), and responsibility (Haraway, 2023) to dialogue with works that go beyond the novel genre, it is possible to broaden literary analyses to think of literature as an anthroposcenic dispositif (Polesso, 2024). Thus, literature can be considered to be besides an art form, a way of making worlds. For repository purposes, the article cites some books that fit into this image production and analyzes three of them.
The enigma of James Marian: gothic body and deviant desires in Esphinge
This study analyzes the novel Esphinge (1908) by Coelho Netto from the perspective of nineteenth-century Gothic fiction. It is argued that the narrative can be read through a Gothic lens not only due to its imagery—haunted mansions, asylums, dreams, and spectral experiences—but also in the ways it addresses issues related to body politics, gender identity, and national identity. Jolene Zigarovich’s (2018) concept of transgothic, which emphasizes transformation and transience in Gothic fiction, is fundamental to this analysis, as it provides a framework for examining transgender identities, cultural hybridisms, and transnational dynamics within the novel. The protagonist, James Marian, experiences conflicts and desires related to Gothic tropes of duality, monstrosity, and the limits of human subjectivity. The Brazilian novel creatively adapts and reinterprets Anglo-American Gothic conventions to critique sociopolitical structures at the turn of the twentieth century in Brazil. It is concluded that Esphinge contributes to the Gothic tradition by destabilizing rigid categories of identity and offering a complex reflection on bodily and cultural hybridity.
Neo-materialist analysis of digital identity politics in Facebook
This paper analyzes the political production of the discursive materialities of Djamila Ribeiro and Carolina Sanín in the digital social network Facebook. For this purpose, a myopic methodology of agential, feminist and spiral cut was developed. The analysis shows that Djamila Ribeiro and Carolina Sanín integrate feminist digital materialities from singular processes of self-edition, from which they respond to/by different entanglements between biological, discursive and technological codes of gender, race/ethnicity, social class, militancy, education and nationality. The above, allows us to affirm that digital identity politics mobilizes technobiodiscourses or material-discursive regimes that produce specific affects and effects, in new displacements of resistance and normalization. These regimes can be traced from the relational-ethical condition that women sustain with technologies.
Transhumanism and the dispute over the concept of Life: between biological life and the death of death
A central characteristic of the present time is the main role that digital life has acquired since the emergence of platform capitalism or surveillance capitalism, and of transhumanism as the dominant ideology of this new era. In this context, the forms of governing life are transformed, and algorithmic logic becomes dominant. The proliferation of electronic devices that capture data about the lives of individuals and populations has become omnipresent, making surveillance capitalism the omniscient Big Other of actions, preferences and desires. The scientific basis of this movement has its epistemic support in the exponential development of neurosciences and neurotechnologies, molecular biology and computer sciences. We understand that Ray Kurzweil, Google's artificial intelligence mentor, is one of the main references of transhumanism, with one of his exemplary works being "The Medicine of Immortality". We interrogate the text to identify the main principles of the transhumanist proposal.
Building language from intra-actions in English classes
The objective of this article is to discuss some events from a language education experience, while drawing on a critical posthumanist perspective to do so. In the second semester of 2019, six students had English classes with the first author at a private language school in Goiânia, a capital in the Central West region of Brazil. Their course generated empirical material for her doctoral dissertation. The arguments presented in this piece are grounded in conceptions of language as sociomaterial practice. Thus, we seek not just to expand but reconfigure understandings of language and what it involves, especially in the classroom, by disrupting the humanist and anthropocentric relation between humans and language. This study is characterized as postqualitative inquiry, not relying on methods, approaches, and procedures. Alternatively, this Deleuzoguattarian framework draws on concepts, which wash over inquirers, redirecting their thoughts and actions. Although the generation of empirical material involved several apparatuses, given the limited space and the need for a more in-depth discussion, we bring into the fold just some of them here. Information from an initial questionnaire is mentioned and some field notes are presented, but our analysis primarily focuses on video-recorded classroom intra-actions with the students who took part in this study, accompanied by movement-images intended to provide a better picture of the agential cuts made for this article. As we address understandings of language, we aim to show how semiotic resources, especially bodily performances, construct sense-making in localized, situated landscapes permeated by material-discursive practices.
The Marks of an event: Arts, Sciences, and Philosophies in Bartholomew Feather
This text makes an approximation to the concepts of Sciences, Arts and Philosophies in Bartholomew Feather (2023) associating them to the Classifying Machine of Humanities as a system of cuts in the creation of the concepts of Human and Humanity and, consequently, in the hierarchy of existences. In dialogue with contemporary authors who research the/in the anthropocene, I seek to address the dimension of human exceptionalism and the possibilities that are established from multispecies relationships. Emphasizing the events that emerge in the encounter between humans and more than humans - with emphasis on the species of Feather and the urban context, reading such concepts enabled the emergence of (sciences, arts, philosophies)-with, listing companionships, paths that make themselves evident to walk and possible and urgent decelerations in the context of a climate crisis in which we find ourselves.
“[...] An IUD Is Only An IUD when it's in the womb”: the intra-action of the discursive and the non-discursive as re-membering
As part of the current doctoral research that considers the polyvalent functioning of the microprosthetic device (Silva, 2021) and intra-active IUD, this text proposes to make a careful defense of a neomaterialist analysis of discourses (Butturi Junior; Camozzato, 2023), in the Foucauldian stitching of concepts dear to neomaterialist, posthuman and composite studies, especially with Tsing, Barad, Bennet and Haraway. The purpose of this text is to stitch together two clippings: one which is the discursive irruption of the IUD, which was the 1960s, the tests with IUD formats and, still, the Dalkon Shield IUD; and the other which is an excerpt from the fabricated story of Mirabel, one of the interviewees who narrated having felt the IUD “[...] piercing from the inside out”. In this filigree of effects, mixtures, assemblages and, multi-species ethnography, for now, some possible points of analysis are: human agencies and more-than-human and non-human things, such as fluids, cells, endometrium, pain, blood, IUD, plastic, copper, synthetic hormone levonorgestrel, in short, are active in the functioning of the microprotetic and intra-active IUD device, both as obstacles to any techno-medical-scientific categorization and as a zone that lacks functional organization for becoming-with to result in contraception; and the polyvalence of these intra-actions, in the play of piercing what is inside and what is outside, are material-discursive re-memberings.
Crowdfucking: the orgasmic machinery of a sexcam platform
In this posthumanist work, I investigate the intricate relationship between human and non-human agents in the construction of intimate and sexual pleasure on Chaturbate, a platform that hosts erotic shows via webcam. I analyze how the production of such bodily sensations is woven by the gathering of a series of elements, with distinct matrices of intelligibility, configuring what I call orgasmic machinery (to illustrate this specific assemblage) as well as crowdfucking (to elucidate the way in which the sexual exchange carried out there is done in a monetized, plural and collaborative manner). By verifying the myriad of participants in this social practice, this research contributes to a better understanding of the way in which different elements, both human and non-human, interact and contribute to create specific socialities and events. Keywords: Assemblage; Chaturbate; New materialisms; Sexcam; Posthumanism
"You have the same 24 hours like a billionaire": neuroproductivity as a device of biopower
This article aims to analyze the discourse of an advertisement featuring a doctor who proposes a neuroproductivity method for achieving financial success. The corpus consists of a video advertisement that frequently appears among other videos on YouTube, making its content accessible to most users who engage with the platform's open mode. In light of this, we begin with an interpretative gesture regarding the discourses surrounding contemporary capitalism, focused on a neoliberal economic policy, which is a structural component of the conditions of existence that underlie the statement of the financial coaching market. Having established this foundation, we then explore the intertwining of contemporary capitalism as it is manifested in the body, through the theoretical lens of Foucault's concept of biopower (2008). We conclude the text with observations on the functioning of capitalist discourse that governs bodies through practices of self-governance, encouraging individuals to continuously monitor and adjust their biology in service of the economic system.
What can a body do? An approach about the HIV-AIDS diveci in publications by Caio Fernando Abreu
This article aims to analyze the presence of the HIV/AIDS device in Caio Fernando Abreu's publications, sharing a brief account of the research being developed during his master's degree and the considerations identified. We believe that analyzing the presence of the HIV device in two different publications by Caio can help map certain regulations—social and political—related to the governance of these bodies in the Brazilian context. To this end, the corpus of analysis consists of the publications: Os dragões não conhecimento o paraíso (Dragons Don't Know Paradise), published in 1988, and Cartas para além dos muros (Cartes Beyond the Walls), published by the same author in a column in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo in 1994. It is believed that the way in which the HIV insurgency was chosen to be named and discursively circulated in the 1980s is directly related to Caio Fernando Abreu's choice, and need, to publish texts on the subject, implicitly and explicitly, omitting pejorative terms as much as possible and seeking to construct a new way of speaking about AIDS and the self.
Posthuman, New Materialisms and Language: A Review