Determination of meaning in orthographic and grammatical law projects and their relation to the scientific-academic debate about language.

• Grant number: 09/17007-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2010
• End date: November 30, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Mónica Graciela Zoppi Fontana
• Grantee: Marcel Caldeira da Silva
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to analyse semantic aspects of the enunciative behaviour of municipal and state law projects which are concerned with questions about Portuguese Language involving its grammatical and orthographic operation. This research is linked to the project "The political discourse about language in Brazil from the 90's", coordinated by Mónica Zoppi Fontana (PQ-CNPq, process 306635/2007-0).Such semantic aspects are related to the way in which language means in legislative context, taking into account an ideal of nationality and the scientific-academic debate about language questions. "Supervision" and "service" are two characteristics which are going to be considered in the law projects as being an aid to the description of the concepts related to language in such documents.For the semantic analysis, the concept of "Semantic Domain of Determination", proposed by Eduardo Guimarães, is going to be used. According to it, words mean through the way they operate in the texts they appear, as a result of relations to other words that determine them in enunciation. An SDD conveys how words' operation in texts produces meaning. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to use a particular corpus in order to analyse the meanings related to language and its components in the legislative instance, taking into consideration the way in which language means in the scientific-academic debate.