For your Child be a normal individual: children's identity in the early twentieth century

• Grant number: 13/15095-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2013
• End date: September 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Portuguese Language
• Principal Investigator: Zilda Gaspar Oliveira de Aquino
• Grantee: Letícia Fernandes de Britto Costa
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project intends to investigate the construction of the juvenile identity through the discourse presented in magazines which target audience is children. The analyzed magazines were published in the first half of the 20th century, in Brazil. The intention is to observe how the aforesaid discourse is characterized and which arguments during that period were essential for the construction of such identity. Therefore, the chosen theoretical foundation was the Theory of Argumentation by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1996 [1958]), Mosca (1997, 2004 and 2006), and Fidalgo and Ferreira (2009); as well as specialists in Discourse Identity such as Wagner (1991), Jungwirth (2007), Moita Lopes (2002) and others that study their works. The corpus consists of the section "Página dos pais" (Parents' page), found inside the Bem-Te-Vi magazine which was aimed at children and that existed in the city of São Paulo during the 1920s and 1930s. It also consists of narrative stories from the magazine O Tico-Tico, which was published in Rio de Janeiro from 1905 to 1960.