Revista de Estudos da Linguagem é um periódico trimestral, com avaliação cega de pares, mantido pela Faculdade de Letras e pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais desde 1992. Tem como missão fomentar a produção científica na área de Teoria e Análise Linguística, permitindo aos pesquisadores do Brasil e do exterior divulgarem suas pesquisas e contribuírem para o debate e o progresso científico na área. A revista recebe submissões eletrônicas em fluxo contínuo para seus números atemáticos e submissões sobre tema específico e dentro de prazo anunciados publicamente para seus números temáticos, sem qualquer cobrança de taxas. De acordo com o último Qualis (Quadriênio 2017-2020), a classificação da Revista é A1. Revista de Estudos da Linguagem is a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal, sponsored by the School of Letters and the Graduate Program in Linguists at Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) since 1992. Its mission is to promote scientific research in the field of Theoretical Linguistics and Linguistic Analysis, therefore providing a venue for the publication of authentic research by Brazilian and foreign scholars, fostering scientific debate and progress in the area. The journal accepts electronic submissions on an ongoing basis for its regular issues and submissions about specific themes within deadlines publicly announced. This is an open access journal and there are no submission nor processing fees.
The dialogism of the emotive-volitional dimension
In order to highlight a dialogical dimension of the subjects’ affects, since they are constitutively situated historically, we discuss how emotional-volitional positions are constructed in an ethical, ideological and authorial context. From this perspective, we assume that the construction of individual sensations and interests are peculiar responses to the ways in which the subject interacts socially, and, therefore, contradictory authorial acts constructed in a situated social practice. To develop our considerations, we will resort to theoretical and methodological parameters from Bakhtin in “The Author and the Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” (2011) and in “Toward a Philosophy of the Act” (2010) in order to analyze various everyday situations portrayed in literature, especially those that appear in the work “Lavoura Arcaica”, by Raduan Nassar (1989), when affective states are thematized in a way that highlights their social axiological character. We emphasize that the emotional volitional constitution of the subject is dialogically activated in an arena of struggles between appreciative and depreciative positions of self-experiments, through the active problematization of the experienced self-sensations and the images of oneself projected by the author and others. Finally, we intend, with the debate, to suggest that affect is more than an individual issue; it is a tense social process.
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The Vertical and Horizontal Configuration of the Constructional Network
One of the core principles of Usage-Based Models is the idea that language is a cognitive network of interconnected constructions, rather than an inventory of isolated linguistic units (Langacker, 2008; Hudson, 2010; Goldberg, 2006, 2019). Building on this perspective, this paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the vertical and horizontal models of constructional networks. Based on a case study of conditional connectives in Portuguese, this paper adopts an integrated view of the network, assuming that vertical and horizontal organization represents distinct yet complementary cognitive tools to represent linguistic structure. The analysis of conditional connectives shows that the vertical links cannot fully account for their semantics and pragmatics overlap, therefore this paper proposes the constructional similarity hypothesis to cover for what it is here called constructional alternation. This hypothesis suggests that speakers generalize across constructional alternation in order to memorize details of usage contexts for similar exemplars, what is capture by horizontal links.
The Variable Expression of The Imperative Mode in The Cities of Feira de Santana-BA and Campinas-SP
Research on the linguistic variation of the imperative mood (Oliveira, 2017; Sampaio, 2001) show that the indicative form (pega) predominates in the speech of Brazilians in the capitals of the Southeast, while the subjunctive form (pegue) occurs more frequently in the capitals of the Northeast, showing a geographical variation. This article, based on the Labovian variationist methodology, aims to map the use of imperative forms (subjunctive ~ indicative) in the interior cities of Campinas and Feira de Santana, areas not yet explored in studies of imperative. To do this, an experiment was realized with 72 participants, stratified by sex/gender, age, education and location, using dialogue scenes with empty balloons that participants filled in with responses appropriate to the situation. The results, in general, reveal that Campinas residents predominantly use imperative forms with indicative morphology (81%), differently of Feirenses (47%), showing a regional difference.
Discursive (dis)agreements between the populisms of Perón and Vargas
This paper intends to reflect on the populist discourses (Laclau, 2013 [2005]) produced from Peronism and Varguism in the socio-historical context of industrial capitalism in Argentina and Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century. In the light of French discourse analysis, we mobilize epistemological assumptions of Pecheutian and Foucauldian extraction. Our objective is to discursively analyze, through discursive sequences (Courtine, 2016), some statements coming from genres in the propagandistic and legal spheres, such as magazines, posters, as well as the Constitutions of both nations in force at the times covered. The questions that guide our analyzes are the following: (a) How do Peronism and Varguism appropriate populism?; (b) How do the notions of work, family and education permeate the discourses produced by the Perón and Vargas governments? Our analysis revealed movements of proximity and distance between such historical contexts. Regarding proximity, the affiliation of both movements to labor discourses promoting modernization based on authoritarianism stands out. However, the development of these populisms leads to different effects of meaning, since while Peronism is linked to the discursivities of sociopolitical militancy, Varguism is affiliated with a conciliatory class policy.
This article, carried out through a qualitative study, has as its object seven posts on the official Havan company account. The objective is to investigate whether the discourse, of a political-ideological nature, from the company owner, as well as from interlocutors with the same biases, attempts to manipulate, intimidate and coerce employees or, even with possible political-ideological divergences, there are openness and freedom to express other ways of being. The study is based on the theoretical-methodological perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 2003, 2010, 2019; van Dijk, 2020), with the analytical categories of disclaimers, intertextuality and assumptions, and the concept of neoliberalism (Avelino, 2016; Bazzicalupo, 2017; Fairclough, 2000, 2010; Safatle, 2021). The results demonstrate that the owner of Havan tries to manipulate, intimidate and coerce employees, as well as it is not seen any type of openness and freedom to express other ways of being. Furthermore, there is the inclusion of other voices (interlocutors) in an attempt to legitimize and universalize their anti-science/education, religious, and happiness discourse in a far-right and neoliberal hegemonic bias..
Grammaticalization of Deictic Gestures in Libras Pronouns During Language Acquisition in Bimodal Bilingual Children
The process of grammaticalization of pronouns is part of the great framework of human linguistic development of intense interest to the scientific community. The analysis of language acquisition in Codas subjects – children of deaf adults – brings a unique view of the linguistic development process as these are subjects who simultaneously acquire two languages of different modalities, therefore, bilingual, bimodal and bicultural people. The main objective of this work was to identify and describe the grammaticalization process during language acquisition in three Codas children. The methodology used consisted of the transcription and analysis of videos of the production of these children in a natural and longitudinal way in two moments of relevance: one at the beginning and another at the end of the language acquisition period. As a result, not only was the grammaticalization of pronouns in Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) identified, but the process through which it occurs was also mapped: namely, the grammatical progression from gestures to demonstrative pronouns, which then bifurcated into either personal or locative pronouns. Personal pronouns, in turn, were grammaticalized into auxiliary pronouns. The research, in addition to drawing attention to the uniqueness of the fact that the grammaticalization process in sign languages can also revolve around gestures, endorses that, as observed in oral-auditory languages, grammaticalization also occurs in Libras, adding to the academic body of registration, appreciation and respect for minority languages of deaf people.
This article addresses hate speech and counter-discourses circulating on Instagram regarding women’s bodies, revealing how women, embedded in power relations, resist through their bodies. In this sense, we analyzed public comments on photos posted by 4 distinct women who are socially recognized as famous, to demonstrate that regardless of age and body types—thin, fat, and well-defined—women suffer social pressure regarding their bodies and an ideal of beauty. Grounded in Foucauldian discourse studies, we aim to understand how discourses, produced by both men and women, unfold in contemporary society under Brazil’s new conditions of production. We reflect on beauty standards, which are mostly unattainable and unrealistic, that prevail today, and especially on the rules of behavior and appearance that are dictated, above all, to women. Consequently, the female body, regardless of its physical form, frequently becomes a target of criticism and attacks in the virtual world, mirroring what occurs in real life. This dynamic highlight and reinforces aspects of the patriarchal system and a society imbued with prejudiced ideas and marked by significant gender inequality.
Transposed-letter Neighbor Effects on Different Syllabic Positions on a Lexical Decision Task
This study examined the effect of transposed-letter neighborhood (TLN) in different syllabic positions during visual word recognition in Brazilian Portuguese. For this, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 40 college students took part in a lexical decision task with masked priming. The stimuli — disyllabic words and pseudowords — were primed by a nonword created by transposing two letters of the target stimulus. The letter transpositions occurred in different syllabic positions: within the first syllable, within the second syllable, or between the first and second syllables. A control condition with no prime was also included. The dependent variable was reaction time in determining whether the stimulus was a word or not. In the second experiment 31 college students took part in the study, and the control condition involved an identity prime. The results from both experiments revealed that the experimental conditions differed significantly from the control but did not differed statistically among themselves. These results suggest that TLN effects do not vary according to syllabic position. This absence of interaction was interpreted in the light of dual-route models of reading, suggesting that the orthographic route plays a primary role in the TLN effect.
How Do Oral Deaf Individuals Comprehend Primary Metaphors and Idioms? Let’s Begin to Dot the I’s and Cross the T’s
Oral deaf people (i.e., people with hearing loss who have learned an oral language) are typically less exposed to auditory and linguistic input than normal hearing peers and might struggle with figurative language comprehension. Our aim is to investigate primary metaphor and idiom comprehension by oral deaf who use hearing amplification devices or cochlear implants. To this end, we used a verbal primary metaphor task, a non-verbal primary metaphor task and an idiom comprehension task. One hundred fifty-one participants took part in the study (57 oral deaf and 97 normal hearing individuals, subdivided into three age levels). Results show that comprehension follows an improvement pattern as participants’ age increases in both experimental and control groups. For the oral deaf individuals, a delay was found for all verbal tasks. For the non-verbal metaphor task, only kids differed statistically, with the oral deaf children performing worse than their counterparts. In conclusion, figurative language comprehension can be more challenging for oral deaf individuals when presented verbally than non-verbally, particularly from adolescence onwards, in comparison to normal hearing peers. This study contributes to informing clinicians and educators about comprehension of primary metaphors and idioms in oral deaf individuals, which may help to identify language impairments and create interventions for figurative language comprehension.
The political of bodies in the feature film 120 BPM (beats per minute)
Derived from a doctoral thesis on materialist Discourse Analysis, this article proposes the conceptual formulation of the political of bodies, with the central objective of understanding how discursive heterogeneity crosses the bodies of subjects who are members of the social activism association ACT UP Paris, related to the HIV/Aids epidemic, based on the fictional portrait present in the feature film 120 BPM (beats per minute) (2017), by Robin Campillo. The concept is developed along with the analytical object, the bodies as discursive materialities of the activist-subjects, in the face of the discursive heterogeneity that is always present in internal meetings and the effect of consensus produced during protests in public and private spaces, in the early 1990s. In the theoretical-analytical path, it is observed that the political, discursively understood as the inexorable division of meanings in the social, is continuously marked in/through the bodies of the activist-subjects during the meetings, provoking and/or feeding back conflicts within the association and, consequently, problematizing the effect of consensus they present during the protests. Therefore, it is concluded that the bodies of the activist-subjects, being discursive, are constitutively and invariably traversed by the political, outlining the functioning of the political of bodies.
Topic Organization in “Enem Dissertation” Genre and Its Correlation with Social Inequality
This paper presents a comparative study of the discursive topic in two “model” ENEM essays written by students from different school environments. The analysis focuses on identifying and delimiting topical segments, as well as on the hierarchical organization of these topics, relating them to the overall coherence of the essay and the students’ school context. The theoretical framework is grounded in the principles of Sociolinguistics (Bortoni-Ricardo, 2005; Labov, 1972a; Labov, 1972b), which establish linguistic variation as systematic, universal, and correlated with both internal and external factors. It also draws on the foundations of socio-interactionist analysis, primarily disseminated through Textual Linguistics. Methodologically, we adopt a qualitative-comparative approach, analyzing two essays: one produced by a public school student and the other by a private school student. The analytical procedures are based on topical analysis, which involves examining the text through the lens of discursive topics. This case study suggests a strong correlation between a more diversified elaboration of discursive topics and subtopics and the students’ social contexts, particularly their school environments. In this sense, this case study highlights the social and educational inequalities present in Brazil, as evidenced by the greater concern with structure, diversity of repertoire, and informativeness in the essay produced within the private school context compared to the one written in the public school setting. We conclude that the category of topic can be a useful analytical tool for revealing both quantitative and qualitative differences in the distribution of information in essays.
In this paper, we aim to describe the influence of chronological age on the variable phenomenon of third-person plural verbal agreement in the spoken language of Florianópolis, drawing from the Monguilhott (2009) and Chaves (2017) datasets. In certain variable phenomena, age has emerged as a highly complex social variable, playing a significant role in influencing processes of generational change or age-based stratification in shaping both individual and community linguistic behaviors. To conduct this study, we associated age with social variables such as education level and occupation, guided by the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Variationist Sociolinguistics (Labov, 2008 [1972]; Labov, 1994), Proposing a reanalysis of third-person plural verbal agreement variation based on data from two samples of a community with a demographic profile different from urban communities. The results indicate that the use of prestigious forms of agreement is more frequent among speakers engaged in the labor market, even at an advanced age, highlighting a unique interdependence among age, education, and labor market.
Language Policies for Indigenous Languages in Brazil
In this paper, I present, through three waves, an overview of language policies for Indigenous peoples after the 1988 Federal Constitution, which recognized the right to lands and cultural differences of those peoples in Brazil. The first wave in the 1990s, focused on language teaching and learning, was marked by the creation of Indigenous schools and the teaching careers for Indigenous peoples. The second wave, in the 2000s, focused on language policies, was marked by the co-officialization of Indigenous languages at the municipal level and the institutionalization of the National Inventory of Linguistic Diversity of IPHAN. The third wave, inclined to language corpus policies, in the 2010s, was marked by the intensification of language documentation and the creation of Indigenous Intercultural Degree courses at universities throughout the country. These waves, generated by the strength of the indigenous movement(s), have recently been driving processes of maintenance and recovery of Indigenous languages.
The concept of “representation” of sign/symbolic systems
The concepts of language and sign are associated with the concept of representation. The function of representing (an object, an idea, etc.) is a property of the sign. It can be stated that a sign exists and is constituted as such to the extent that it represents something. Voloshinov (2017) dedicates himself, in the first chapters of Marxism and philosophy of language, to discussing the way in which representation occurs in sign systems. The German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (2001), when conceiving that our relationship with the object is mediated by signs, also discusses this topic of representation at length. In this sense, this article aims to analyze and compare the concept of “representation” outlined by Cassirer (2001) and the way Voloshinov (2017) deals with this concept. Similarities and differences in the two authors are pointed out, in order to understand how the representation of sign systems presented by Voloshinov is unique. It is concluded that the concept of “representation”, in Cassirerian philosophy, is broad and complex, and can be considered under different aspects: as a symbolic function; as constitution of meaning of symbolic forms; as structuring of consciousness. The concept of “representation”, in Voloshinov (2017), is more delimited. Voloshinov adopts the premise, presented by Cassirer, that our relationship with the object is mediated by signs. The Russian author concludes that sign systems are representative to the extent that they are not self-enclosed, unlike non-semiotized objects.
This article outlines a typology for what is classified as collective voice in enunciative theories. Voice is understood as the origin of a point of view, linked to an attitude toward specific content. The study builds on the works of Berrendonner (1981), Ducrot (1987 [1984]), Anscombre (2005, 2010), Nølke et al. (2004, 2017), Carel (2011, 2023), Bastos (2017), and Nascimento (2020) to analyze the presidential inaugural speeches of Fernando Collor de Mello (1990) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003) of Brazil. Drawing on a literature review, initial analytical categories were defined, enabling the proposal of a coordinated framework with more detailed categories through corpus comparison. At the first level, the collective voice was subdivided into two main categories: (a) prior to enunciation and (b) constructed within and through enunciation. The latter was further classified into subcategories by (b.1) contributing phenomena and (b.2) scope. This coordinated definition of categories aimed to enable the testing of their interrelations in other corpora. The project linked to this article plans such testing in its second phase.
The auxiliary verb vir a (lit. ‘come to’) as a marker of posteriority
This paper discusses, from a predominantly semantic perspective, the auxiliary verb vir a (lit. ‘come to’) as a marker of posteriority, distinguishing between two temporal and modal values that it can be associated with: one purely prospective and non-factual, as in the sentence se tudo corresse bem, viríamos a descobrir a verdade (‘if everything went well, we would discover the truth’), the other prospective-retrospective and factual, as in the sequence tinham-nos mentido; só viríamos/viemos a descobrir a verdade uns dias depois (‘they had lied to us; we would only discover the truth a few days later’). Various grammatical factors affecting the use of this auxiliary verb are scrutinized, viz. type of temporal perspective point, tense and mood values, Aktionsart of the described eventualities, possible presence of adjuncts of posteriority, or comparable prospective forms; the relevance of taking into account presupposed information is emphasised, though not elaborated upon. Contexts in which the use of vir a appears to be redundant, i.e. where its elimination does not affect the truth conditions of the sentence, are analysed in some detail.
Dialectometric Analysis of the Lexical Maps from EALMG
This paper presents a dialectometric analysis of the second linguistic atlas published in Brazil, the Draft of a Linguistic Atlas of Minas Gerais – EALMG (Ribeiro et al. 1977), with the aim of discussing the dialectal division of Minas as proposed by Zágari (1998, 2005): São Paulo speech, Minas speech, and Bahia speech. Based on a set of 22 lexical maps from the atlas, a statistical-mathematical method is employed to analyze the material, using the online tool DiaTech®, a well-validated software for dialectometric analysis according to the parameters of the Salzburg Dialectometric School (Goebl, 2012) (Brissos, Gillier, Saramago, 2017). The results include cluster analyses and synoptic maps of similarity and asymmetry, which partially confirm the aforementioned tripartition of the Minas dialect. This study contributes to Brazilian Dialectology by advancing dialectometric approaches, which, concerning their application to Brazilian Portuguese data, are still relatively underexplored.
This study explores the idea of language as a process that is established and is developed from moment to moment between the interactants in a situated interaction. Assuming a critical perspective over the hegemonic linguistic theories that prioritize language as a product, this investigation aims to approximate the linguistic analysis to the embodiment studies, or, to the understanding that language and cognition cannot be considered apart from the body. For that, an excerpt was analysed from a recorded live interview between the journalist Leda Nagle and the singer Tim Maia, taken from the TV program Sem Censura, and available online. The analysis was developed by the use of the software ELAN (Wittenburg et al., 2006) and the result of this exploration illustrates how the interactional process is the fundamental way through which the human language is organised.
Analysis and description of the intonational pattern of wh-in-situ questions in Brazilian Portuguese
The goal of this study is to analyze and formally describe the intonational pattern of neutral wh-in-situ questions in the variety of Portuguese spoken in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The data analyzed were obtained through studio recording of 12 individuals, born and residing in the city, who read a script containing wh-in-situ interrogative sentences in different discursive-pragmatic contexts that favor the occurrence of the structure, based on Oushiro (2011). The intonational annotation was made according to the DaTo system (Lucente, 2008, 2012, 2022) in the software Praat (Boersma; Weenink, 2022). Statistical analyses of f0 values were also carried out, with the help of the R language (R Core Team, 2023). The results indicate that the wh-in-situ questions predominantly present, in the collected data, a pattern of gradual increase in f0 followed by a descending movement in the stressed syllable of the wh-word. It is also concluded that the range of variation of the average f0 values was smaller in sincere questions, that is, questions for which new information is expected as an answer, with a closed set of answers given in the previous sentence, which seems to be related to a greater degree of activation of the common ground and a lesser need for intonational prominence.
Dynamic modality and its relation to politeness in Late Modern English women’sinstructive writing
This study examines how dynamic modality, specifically the auxiliaries may and can, conveys politeness in nineteenth-century English instructive prose. A typology and the semantics of modality in English have been widely described, with particular emphasis on epistemic and deontic readings (Bybee et al., 1994; Coates, 1983; Hoye, 1997; Nuyts, 2016; Palmer, 2001; van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998). Within politeness research, modals figure centrally among mitigation strategies in requests and directives (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Leech, 2014). In instructive and household-hygiene genres, especially recipe books and manuals, work in the history of discourse shows how gendered and period-specific conventions condition grammatical and relational choices (Alonso-Almeida, 2013; Taavitsainen & Pahta, 2011). In contrast to the prevailing focus on epistemic and deontic meanings, dynamic modality (e.g., can, may as resources of ability/possibility used to soften directives) remains comparatively underexplored in women’s historical writing, a gap the present study addresses. It uses query-driven concordance searches and normalised frequency profiling, followed by full-context manual reading to disambiguate dynamic, deontic, and epistemic uses in the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English, 1800–1899 (CoWITE19). It finds that may and can routinely soften directives by framing options and capacities rather than commands; in this corpus, can often presents circumstantial ability and procedural affordances, whereas may licenses alternatives for the reader. It concludes that dynamic modals function as a subtle yet powerful resource that enables women authors to manage authorial persona, maintain politeness, and instruct effectively within nineteenth-century social constraints.
Coherence in the Parediction of Dicendi Verbs in Abstracts
The relationship between technology and human language is a topic of growing debate, especially with the emergence of large-scale language models (LLMs) and their textual production capacity. This research is justified by the importance of verifying the proximity between the linguistic productions of LLMs and humans, based on the assumption that human language is shaped by epilinguistic knowledge. To this end, we conducted a comparative study in which we asked students and LLMs to suggest verbs (dicendi) to coherently fill gaps in a summary of a source text. The choice of a school summary was motivated by the need for a deep understanding of the original text and textual coherence, which represents a challenge for both humans and LLMs. The methodology included the comparison of the students’ and 5 LLMs suggestions via chat, seeking to assess coherence with the source text. The results show that LLMs and humans presented good suggestions in the gaps. However, the results contradict the initial hypothesis that humans would present greater lexical diversity. On the other hand, the results also indicate that LLMs perform better in terms of local and global coherence. These facts suggest that LLMs can be a support tool for studies related to the intersection between language and technology, including for teaching.
Reflections on cooperativity and intention in communication
Human communication is often depicted as a collaborative activity characterized by a high level of cooperativeness, as both sender and receiver assume supposedly interdependent roles in a process that essentially involves inferring the sender’s communicative intention through the signals emitted within a given communicative context. However, the alleged existence of unintentional forms of communication contradicts this interpretation. Building upon the overall framework of Herbert H. Clark’s joint activity theory (1996) and assuming that the overarching function of communication is to facilitate the coordination of cooperative activities, the role of communicative intention is reassessed within the general framework of collective behaviors with the aim of analyzing its function in action coordination and communication dynamics to verify whether it is an inherent part of this dynamic. In conclusion, it is suggested that the constraint imposed by the opportunities for cooperation offered by the situational context allows the apprehension of the situation to serve as the primary basis of communication. This implies that the signals from the sender would merely constitute a part of this context, the contribution of which to the final determination of the coordination solution between the agents would vary. As a consequence, in terms of purely informational functionality, there appears to be no qualitative difference between intentional communication and unintentional information transfers. This perspective shifts emphasis to the receiver, redefines the cooperative nature of communication, strengthens parallels of communication with other coordination devices, and offers a coherent account of so-called “unintentional communication”.
The impact of the “lack of listening” in utterances of homeless people
The article aims to understand what are the possible impacts of social marginalization by analyzing utterances and discursive interactions of homeless people, especially the “lack of listening”. The analyzed corpus is composed of transcripts of testimonials from homeless people, recorded in video format by the NGO SP Invisível. The analysis was based on the sociological method presented by Voloshinov in Marxism and Philosophy of Language, while the transcriptions were made according to the rules of the NURC Project, which allow the recording of verbal and extraverbal aspects of utterances. The results indicate that social marginalization and the lower occurrence of discursive interactions do not affect the speakers’ addressing and self inscription in their utterances, as well as the thematic content organization and compositional construction.
Discourses and Ideologies About Deaf Subjects
This article revolves around the objective of analyzing the representation of the Deaf in a privileged locus of enunciation: a set of eight (8) entrance exam essay evaluated with the highest score in the 2017 edition of the Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (ENEM), whose proposed theme was “Challenges for the educational formation of the deaf in Brazil”. To do so, we discuss the notions of discursive formation (DF) and statements within the theoretical framework of Materialist Discourse Analysis (AD), as proposed by the French philosopher M. Pêcheux. The analysis aims to examine the discursive construction of the deaf in a society where there is a constant ideological struggle between ableist discourses substantiated by the neoliberal system, on the one hand, and counter-hegemonic discourses, on the other. Based on our analysis, we reflect on the statements and DFs about the Brazilian deaf subject materialized in the texts of the candidates that make up the constructed corpus, elucidating the anchors of the identified FDs and the discourses related to the image of the Deaf in the social imaginary of Brazil. We draw attention to the symbolic and discursive constitution demarcated in this space of enunciation, aiming to contribute to the debate about Brazilian deaf communities and their social rights from a discursive perspective.
Research in pronunciation learning and teaching over the past years has advanced the idea that working with the intelligibility and comprehensibility constructs is fundamental to developing pronunciation for successful communication. This study investigates the relationship between the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages - CEFR phonological scale (2018 version), and two measures commonly used in second language (L2) speech research, namely, intelligibility and comprehensibility rates. Speech samples from 16 Brazilian speakers of English were collected. Their speech samples were assessed by 14 listeners, teachers of English, in terms of intelligibility, comprehensibility and phonological control. The raters transcribed the speech samples, which generated an intelligibility score (number of words correctly transcribed); for comprehensibility, the raters assigned a level of difficulty in understanding the speech through a nine-point scale; finally, they used the CEFR scale to rate the level of phonological control for each speaker. Results show a highly significant correlation between intelligibility and comprehensibility, but not significant correlation between these two speech dimension variables and phonological control.
This study explores linguistic-cognitive aspects in the emergence of verbal neologisms — novel lexical constructions expressed as verbs to denote actions. Our subject includes neologisms related to leisure activities such as bebemorar, canastrar, noronhar, praiar, resenhar, rolezar, turistar, brifar, and professional activities such as jobar, performar, schedular, teletrabalhar, and tradar. Our hypothesis is that the creation of these words reflects the need to blend encyclopedic knowledge into a single lexical construction, which expresses a specific action concept composed of a set of activities related to the semantic frame of an object concept, organized through conceptual blending. The research is based on Construction Grammar (Croft, 2022; Hoffmann, 2022a) and the concepts of Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 2006) and Conceptual Blending (Fauconnier & Turner, 2006). The data were collected from public profiles on social networks such as Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and YouTube, and confirmed as neologisms due to their significant absence in our reference lexicographical corpora. The analysis reveals a tendency to combine different world knowledge to create an action concept by blending at least two distinct domains contained within a common semantic frame of an object concept. The neologism praiar, for example, blends several groups of activities captured in the Leisure frame, directly involved in the locative object beach: rest activities (sunbathing, reading), aquatic activities (swimming, diving), physical activities (walking, playing sports), social activities (flirting, visiting bars), among others. These activities are cognitively evoked through sociocultural and individual knowledge.
Contexts of use of [y] and [cuando] in written Spanish
This work analyzes the contexts of use (Diewald, 2002, 2006) of the connectors [y] (“[and]”) and [cuando] (“[when]”), in written Spanish, under the theoretical basis of Cognitive-Functional Linguistics (Furtado da Cunha; Bispo; Silva, 2013; Rosário; Oliveira, 2016; Rosário, 2022a), in order to investigate their degree of integration. From a methodological point of view, the investigation is basic (Paiva, 2019), exploratory, descriptive-explanatory (Gil, 2002; Paiva, 2019), bibliographic and documentary (Lakatos; Marconi, 1992), with a quantitative and qualitative bias (Paiva, 2019). The data analyzed comes from one hundred occurrences of use of [y] (“[and]”) and [cuando] (“[when]”) in adjacency collected in the Corpus del Español (Davies, 2012-2019), NOW subcorpus. The results point to high productivity of the uses of [[y] [cuando]] (“[[and] [when]]”) without segmentation between them (90.17%). Furthermore, uses of these adjacent elements in different contexts are noticeable, from the most autonomous to the most integrated. From a pragmatic-discursive point of view, these elements act not only in narrative sequencing, but in more (inter)subjective contexts, such as in argumentative and dialogical textual typologies. It is concluded that, although it is not possible to postulate the full constructionalization of [y cuando]conec (“[and when]conec”), constructional changes that favor more integrated uses can be noted.
This article aims to investigate the stress patterns of Brazilian Portuguese blends from the perspective of Acoustic Phonetics. This process is a complex morphophonological phenomenon involving two bases in its formation. Its uniqueness lies in the suppression of phonetic material during the merging of the involved bases, as observed in examples like namorido (namorado ‘boyfriend’ + marido ‘husband’), futelama (futebol ‘soccer’ + lama ‘mud’), and boacumba (boa ‘good’ + macumba ‘macumba’). According to the descriptions by Gonçalves (2003) and Andrade (2008), blends exhibit different formation patterns. Some blends may display phonological similarity between the bases, referred to as lexical interposition. Others, however, may lack similarity between the bases, characterizing the pattern as truncated combination. Additionally, a third group of blends can be formed by the insertion of an invasive word into a target word, known as sublexical substitution. Based on these classifications, the hypothesis was raised that blends may exhibit distinct stress patterns depending on their formation type. The lexical interposition and sublexical substitution patterns are hypothesized to feature a single primary stress. In contrast, the truncated combination pattern is expected to exhibit two primary stresses. To test this hypothesis, an experimental study was conducted to obtain the average relative duration of blend syllables. Subsequently, a multivariate analysis using clustering was performed to assess the distances between stressed and unstressed syllables in blends. These syllables were then compared using the generated dendrograms. The results indicate that Brazilian Portuguese blends show a general rhythmic organization regarding the relative duration of syllables, which is independent of their length as well as their formation pattern.
Imaginaries of the Brazilian Diplomatic Discourse
This study examines the frequency and manner in which Celso Amorim mobilizes left-wing sociocultural imaginaries in his official discourses, considering Charaudeau’s (2016) semiolinguistic perspective. As part of a broader research project analyzing 20 years of official discourses by Brazilian chancellors – from the first Lula government to the Bolsonaro administration – this article specifically focuses on Celso Amorim and on the theme of political ideology. The research is based on theoretical categories of discourse analysis, particularly Charaudeau’s (2016) model, and incorporates the notion of Culture Wars, as conceived by Hunter (1991), to explore ideological tensions in diplomatic discourse. Initially, the study sought to catalog the constants of the so-called “Rhetoric of Cultural War,” a category of analysis we developed for examining discursive clashes in polarized contexts such as culture wars. Subsequently, after describing the quantitative findings, representative excerpts of the results were qualitatively analyzed through the lens of the aforementioned theoretical frameworks. The conclusions indicate that Amorim consistently employed a left-wing political discourse, albeit without adopting a confrontational approach, aligning with the traditional pragmatism and universalism of Brazilian diplomacy. This study thus aims to contribute to the understanding of Brazilian diplomatic discourse – a field still little explored in linguistic studies – while also offering reflections on the ideological dimensions of foreign policy rhetoric conveyed in these discourses.
Frederico Rios C. dos Santos Tostes de Arantes
The spread of misinformation through social media platforms seriously threatens democratic societies. This article discusses how the features of human cognition and communication are strategically harnessed by misinformation. From the perspective of cognition, we address theoretical strands that underpin the evolution of language, both rationalist (Chomsky, 2010, 2013, 2016) and functionalist (Reboul, 2017), leading to the epistemic vigilance approach (Sperber et al., 2010; Sperber; Mercier, 2017). The analysis reveals a conception of cognition that operates in communication with vulnerabilities to domineering use in mass communication environments, bypassing epistemic vigilance. To support this hypothesis, from a communication point of view, we will examine both rhetorical-pragmatic (Perelman; Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1996) and semantic-grammatical phenomena (Carlson, 2011) to substantiate the linguistic materiality of the manipulation in disinformation discourse.