Léxico da marginalização: malandragem e ressignificação

Abstract

Analyzing the phenomenon of marginalization is a prodigious way of reflecting on the functioning of Brazilian society. From it, it is possible to identify a series of processes that have repercussions on the language, including stereotyping, which reveals itself as a forceful form of oppression against excluded segments of society. In this sense, designations such as “trickster” appear as brands of the stigma attributed to certain people. On the other hand, another process emerges in contrast: resignification, through which the discriminated sectors themselves react to the blame attributed to them. In view of this, the research undertaken here sought to understand, in parallel, both the change involving the lexical units analyzed and the conditions, factors and circumstances that framed this process throughout history, speculating about the existence of a “historical common mode” for the trajectory of some lexical units that, despite having been used in different contexts and with different meanings, share a series of common elements. In this way, associating itself with the contributions of Socio-historical Lexicology, this work focused on a broad corpus, accessed through the Hemeroteca, a platform of the National Digital Library, which allowed the analysis of texts, especially journalistic ones, corresponding to the first half of the 19th century, resulting in 147 records containing the occurrences of units with the radical “malandr-”. This operation made it possible to map its uses in that period to allow a quantitative and qualitative analysis. Furthermore, other texts were sought, such as popular songs from the 20th and 21st centuries, with the aim of allowing a comparative reflection between the signs involved in this phenomenon. With this premise, the analysis of the units aimed to take place within the extension and diversity of the society that used and transformed them, not being restricted to an official and normative perspective. In this process, the proposal of a sociolexical field was presented, which arises from the dialogue between the notion of social field, discussed by Bourdieu (2008), and that of linguistic field, widely analyzed by linguists such as Geckeler (1976). This category, of an interdisciplinary nature – consistent with the nature of the research itself – aimed to group the units that, despite having different contexts of use, went through a process of common resignification, reflecting the similarity of the socio-historical processes involved.