Modelos de contexto e as marcas linguístico-discursivas no discurso de idosos do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This thesis, titled Context Models and Linguistic-Discursive Markers in the Discourse of Elderly People from Rio de Janeiro, is based on a fundamental premise proposed by Van Dijk (2020), considering three inseparable concepts: discourse, context, and cognition. In line with the mentioned author, it is postulated that it is not the social situation that influences discourse, but rather the way in which participants define the communicative situation that influences it. Therefore, constructs are not an objective condition that determines discourse. They are, in fact, (inter)subjective constructs, conceived step by step by the interlocutors, systematically updated in the interaction, in the communicative situation in which they are inserted. Context is thus understood as the individual constructs of the participants, as it constitutes an interface between cognition, society, discourse, and the individual. This premise aligns with the theoretical principle to which this research is affiliated: the sociocognitive theory, which understands language as grounded in the result of the interaction of various joint actions performed by individuals, with interlocutors seen as active actors and social constructors. Based on this basic premise, the research focuses on the relationship between a specific corpus, consisting of ten semi-structured interviews conducted with elderly residents of Rio de Janeiro who have lived there for over forty years, aiming to analyze the predominant context models in their speech. Affiliated with the description of the Portuguese language, this perspective on context models is expanded from the aforementioned author, proposing an analytical relationship of these models with the linguistic-discursive markers that materialize them discursively. Through qualitative analysis, which considers the variable structures of language and discourse, three categories of analysis are proposed, namely: context model of unique experiences (1), context model of social bases (2), and egocentric context model (3). The specific linguistic-discursive markers found are: 1) adjectives and adverbs; 2) knowledge of socially shared facts and events; and 3) personal and possessive pronouns, and verbs in the present and in the simple past. The results indicate that these models allow participants to adjust discourse to different communication situations, according to its relevance to them at each new moment of social interaction, defining the conditions for discourse adequacy, with a synergy of dependence and influence between the text/speech and the context