A concepÃÃo da homossexualidade em textos jornalÃsticos: uma anÃlise crÃtica da transitividade verbal

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2007

RESUMO

Homosexuality has always sorrow a state of social stigma and prejudice during the whole occidental history. For a long time it has been identified as an abnormal orientation when compared to heterosexuality. Sometimes it has seen as a heresy, sometimes as a mental disturb (GREEN; POLITO, 2004; TREVISAN, 2004). Nevertheless, due to increasing combat for freedom sexual orientation attempted to several homosexuals in the world, gays have reached social prominence in the last decades. One of the main areas of visibility is the newspaper once it is responsible for diffusing news about many affirmative actions from this group. Because of this, we aim to verify how homosexuality has being represented at printed journalistic settings in the last few years. Our data is composed by news about Sexual Diversity Parade published in the most read newspaper from Pernambuco â DiÃrio de Pernambuco, Folha de Pernambuco and Jornal do Commercio â from 2000 to 2006. Framed in the research line of Socio-pragmatic Discourse Analysis, our study is based on theoreticmethodological conceptions from Systemic-functional linguistics developed by Michael Halliday (1970; 1985; 2004), considering his postulates about the ideational language function. We chose as analysis category the verbal transitivity that, according to Halliday (1985; 2004), constitutes a promising resource in order to investigate social representation. That is, the verbal processes used by journalists and the sort of role they attribute to gays â passive or active â work as resources which construct social images of homosexuality. Our theoretical postulates are based on the conception in which texts/discourses are effective social practices. So we founded on Critical Discourse Analysis, especially in the studies of Norman Fairclough (1989, 2001a, 2001b, 2003). We identified the way gays are presented on transitive enunciation and interpreted their value in wide social context. We analyzed enunciation with processes of material, verbal and mental types, that is, respectively, those that indicate concrete actions about an object (to mobilize, to mount), elocution ways (to speak, to tell) and cognitive or sentimental activities (to calculate, to wish). The great number of our data revealed that gays are presented as agents, that is, social actors who exert activities about others, what seems to them the guaranty of the social autonomy image before their history of marginalization. Although this identity is limited, since this happens only when gays practice actions about their own performance contexts (for instance, events they organize). In relation to their object role, goal or actions beneficiary, the opposite happens: they are always presented as somebody elseâ patients, a heterosexual individual or some institution far from their performance context. These results indicate that homosexuals have being gained a huge social visibility in the newspapers; however they are represented a lot more in the practices of their passive roles, or active with several limitation, from those ones of effective social performance. This implies a construction of a social image of visibility bigger than before, but it still has a low performance level or, as commended Fairclough (2003), social inclusion through discourse

ASSUNTO(S)

homosexuality discourse social representation transitividade verbal representaÃÃo social homossexualidade discurso linguistica verbal transitivity

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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