Meanings of poverty in Brazilian politics and media: a discursive analysis of the production and reception of sayings and silences about the poor in Brazil

• Grant number: 13/10266-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: August 15, 2013
• End date: July 14, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Carlos Félix Piovezani Filho
• Grantee: Carlos Alberto Turati
• Supervisor: Marie-Anne Paveau
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris 13 - Nord, Villetaneuse, France
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/16355-0 - Meanings of poverty in Brazilian politics and media: a discursive analysis of the production and reception of sayings and silences about the poor in Brazil, BP.DR

Abstract

Since the presidency of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, poverty has become a ubiquitous theme in the political discourse in Brazil, and also frequent in other social spheres. This trend was intensified even more in the government of Dilma Rousseff, who even announced the slogan "Brazil - A wealthy country is a country without poverty" as motto of her government, followed by the implementation of the state program "Plan Brazil without misery". For this reason, our research proposes to investigate the various discourses and meanings about poverty in contemporary Brazilian society, considering the fields of politics and media, starting from a discursive analysis of presidential pronouncements that accentuate the motto of government, texts of the referred program and its repercussion on large media vehicles of national journalism. To do it, our theoretical framework is Discourse Analysis, of which the fundamentally critical character allows and requires a reflection about the ethical dimension of speech in society, especially when it is considered social issue as pressing like is the poverty in Brazil. Such reflection should address the relationship between social, moral and language norms, as well as the criteria of truth and beliefs in speech, in order better to understand the production of hegemonies and resistances in contemporary discursive actions. With the development of these issues in mind, we propose the realization of a 12-month stage at the Université de Paris XIII, under the co-supervision of Professor Marie-Anne Paveau. In recent research, Paveau has developed studies concerning the relations between ethics and discourse, analyzing institutional discourses: politicians and mediatic. In addition, she is recognized as an expert on the history and epistemology of Discourse Analysis. Therefore, considering her expertise, the affinities of theory and object between her researches and our work, and the growth opportunities offered by academic institutions for research based in Paris, we believe that the realization of this stage will be fundamentally important to the achievement of quality desired for our thesis and our intellectual formation. (AU)