Escolhas lexicais e iconicidade textual: uma análise do insólito no romance Sombras de Reis Barbudos

Abstract

The objective herein is to describe and understand the textual tessiture of the insolite phenomena in the novel Sombras de Reis Barbudos, by José J. Veiga, based on the association between the Theory of Verbal Iconicity and Corpus Linguistics. It focused specifically in the linguistic marks that represent ideas or lead the interpreter to the perception of how the insolite is constructed in the text, by means of lexical items that constitute iconic hints. In the study, nouns are given a special attention, above all the other word categories, because, being words with a high inconicity level, they take part in the construction/representation of the insolite phenomena and create, by means of the lexical path, the reading itinerary to the text-corpus. In order to have a significant result, the research had as support the digital resources of Corpus Linguistics (SARDINHA, 2004; 2009), which made it possible to fulfill a research based on only one corpus. The use of Corpus Linguistics as methodology allowed to rise, quantify and tabulate the signs that corroborate the comprehension of the incongruence and the lexical iconicity of the insolite phenomena in a literary text, identifying the node nouns and their collocates to evaluate them in relation to the incompatibility of the lexical choices fulfilled by José J. Veiga in comparison with the grammar-lexical structures in Portuguese. This study justified discussion on the insolite as an essential category of the Fantastic as a mode (BESSIÈRE, 2009; COVIZZI, 1978; FURTADO, s.d.; PRADA OROPREZA, 2006); on the Peircean Semiotic, which highlights the Verbal Iconicity Theory (SIMÕES, 2007, 2009) and on the lexical collocation (BÉNJOINT, 1994; SINCLAIR, 1987, 1991, 2004; TAGNIN, 1989). The thesis demonstrates that the incongruence and the lexical iconicity are identified by vocabulary obtained by digital processing and confrontation with Portuguese Corpus. The analysis proves that nouns, as a linguistic class that can be semantically categorized, have either designation or nominative functions in the construction of a text in which the insolite is manifested. It also reveals that the lexical incongruence constitutes itself a key to the construction of the illogical, magical, fantastic, mysterious, supernatural, unreal and super real in the corpus text