The construction of the scientific narrative in the Human Sciences: discursive analysis of editorials in the journal Varia Historia (2007-2016)

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to analyze the main discursive and argumentative strategies conveyed by the discourses contained in the editorials published in a journal of national and international relevance to the area in question, Varia Historia. The time frame, which covers the period from 2007 to 2016, aimed to reveal the construction of the scientific narrative for the humanities area through History. To achieve this goal, a Content Analysis (CA) was carried out in order to organize the corpus analyzed in Discourse Analysis (DA), taking Patrick Charaudeau's Semiolinguistic Theory (ST) as its scope. Based on a triangular situation consisting of an arguing subject, in this case represented by the editor of Varia Historia magazine, the target subject, who are the magazine's readers, and the proposal about the world, the work aimed to build a premise for the actions of the two subjects. We analyzed 23 editorials, whose corpus made it possible to extract 31 representative excerpts for the argumentative study, through which we found the answer to the specific objectives of the study, which were: a) to identify the discursive formations present in the editorials of the aforementioned journal; b) to analyze the construction of the scientific narrative for the humanities area, through History, based on Patrick Charaudeau's semiolinguistic theory and, c) to understand the construction of the concept of science in the narratives present in the editorials published in the aforementioned journal. The study identified the discursive formations in excerpts taken from the editorials and, based on this identification, the construction of the scientific narrative in the Human Sciences through the discursive analysis of the corpus was analyzed and understood. In short, by analyzing the editorials, it was possible to understand the potential of this new object as a political-scientific instance and the scientific doing of a domain of knowledge. The model of a theoretical-methodological combination between CA and DA, and a new object - the scientific editorial - proved fruitful for understanding the discursive elements present in the editorials, revealing the concept of science constructed according to discussions about the neutrality of science itself, the construction of academic knowledge and its relations with lay knowledge, politics as a historical subject, and, finally, the concern with the internationalization of the journal, and the circulation of scientific knowledge in History.