Os caminhos da pragmática no Brasil

This paper traces the history of the study of pragmatics in Brazil. It is shown that Brazilian researches have, by and large, remained attentive to major developments in the field taking place elsewhere in the world. Of particular importance is the burgeoning tendency to focus attention on social issues affecting the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. More and more researchers are realizing the need to assume a critical role in relation to the theories they encounter in the literature.

Resonancias discursivas y cortesía en prácticas de lecto-escritura

In this paper we present a study of reading comprehension based on a contrastive argumentative-discursive approach. We examine the relationship between linguistic materiality and discursive processes, observing the connection between reading in a foreign language, writing production and textual memories in the mother tongue. In addition to an interest in practical language teaching and learning processes (in this case of Spanish and Portuguese), we investigate the question of politeness and the theoretical relationship between subjectivity, language, and textuality. The latter, being understood as the result of discourse regularities, is unique for each and every production, yet is also conditioned by plural discursive memories resulting from contradictory social relationships in a specific historical context (Foucault, 1986; Pêcheux, 1990). In the experiment presented here, we follow some of the procedures of the methodology applied in the European Galatea Project developed for the study of reading strategies in the inter-comprehension between Romance languages (Dabène, 1996). We use the procedure of simulation and the subjective projection of participants as well as the notion of discursive resonance in the analysis. The results, having to do with directness and indirectness in speech and the question of politeness in two typologically close languages, lead to the conclusion that the concept of politeness goes beyond a pragmatic strategy used to avoid conflicts to be approached as a marker of cultural identity constitution. The relevance of discursive awareness and its theoretical and practical consequences are then emphasized.

Tradução e corpo

The present paper brings about a possible articulation between translation and body from a non-sublimated, pragmatic perspective on meaning, as suggested by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. By considering theoretical elaborations within embodied realism and elsewhere on the role of the body in cognitive processes, together with a critique of the concept of translation somatics, as proposed by Douglas Robinson (1991), the paper highlights the situated and social character of the translator's body.