A palavra-chave racismo e suas relações lexicais: uma análise crítica dos discursos sobre relações raciais brasileiras em corpus de jornal impresso

Paulo Henrique Caetano

Departing form a tradition in linguistic studies in the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis, through the analysis of lexical cohesion in mediated discourse, within the CORDIALL Project, from Faculdade de Letras, UFMG, this research has approached the discourse field of racial relations in Brazil as represented in a corpus of a broadsheet newspaper. The concept of discourse adopted was that of Fairclough (1992), where it has been defined as social practices and social relations, as social construction of reality, and as form of knowledge. This allowed for the verification, within the choices of the mediated discourse, in the realm of lexical cohesion, of the ideological nature of the construction of meaning. The analysis was focused on the lexical relations of keyword racismo, as well as semantically related lexical items and collocations, organized in semantic fields. The central concepts of this discourse field have been analyzed in terms of their occurrence in the corpus, in contrast with their uses and definitions from dictionaries and specialized literature. The semantic fields were named semantic field of naturalized racial relations, semantic field of social identities, with emphasis on socio-racial identities, and semantic field of racial relations under reconstruction. The main focus of the research has been upon the tendencies in the lexicon, sectioned into these semantic fields, in terms of its orientation to difference (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003), that is, the discursive tendencies of a newspaper towards an openness, an accentuation, an attempt to resolve, a bracketing of, or a consensus in relation to difference, aspects which privilege the observation of patters of interdiscursivity. Some methodological tenets were replicated from Fairclough (2003), aiming at identifying discursive tensions, power asymmetries and tendencies towards discursive change for central concepts in the racial relations in Brazil, such as racismo (racism), raça (race), cor da pele (skin color), étnico (ethnic), preconceito (prejudice), discriminação (discrimination), ação afirmativa (affirmative action), sistema de cotas (system of quotas), and democracia racial (racial democracy). Attention was also given to the tendencies of commodification, tecnologization, and democratization of the discourse. The choice for a corpus of a broadsheet newspapers took into consideration three moments of great impact on the debates over racial relations in Brazil: the commemoration of 300th anniversary of death (immortality) of Zumbi dos Palmares, in 1995; the UN Conference in Durban, in 2001; and the episodes of racism in soccer games in Brazil, triggered by the Grafite affair, in 2005. These three years were evidenced by the large quantity of texts published in the newspaper elected for the corpus, Folha de São Paulo, containing the keyword racismo, significantly higher than the other years in the decade between 1995 and 2005. In the first moment, 1995, the emphasis was laid upon a tendency towards commodification of discourse, once the main event of that year, the 300th anniversary of Zumbi, gained secondary attention in relation to Folha de São Paulos publication, Racismo Cordial. A high level of self reference permeated the discursive practices of Folha and its allied enterprises, which made possible an internal coinage of discourses that were self sustained, resulting in remarkable traits in the lexicon of that year. In the second moment, the emphasis was on the great level of tecnologization of discourse, involving Brazilian preparation for, and participation in the International

A palavra-chave racismo e suas relações lexicais: uma análise crítica dos discursos sobre relações raciais brasileiras em corpus de jornal impresso

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