Racial quotas in letters from readers of the “Caros Amigos” magazine: a dialogic perspective

Abstract

In this article we intend to demonstrate some results obtained in our dissertation, which was presented in the second semester of 2011. In the research, we analyzed texts from printed media inserted in a discursive chain of conflicts and clashes, a real platform for polemic concerning the system of quotas in Brazil. Our purpose is to analyze the way in which the dialogic interactions are generated among the participants of the discursive event: how the author dialogues with the object of discourse and with the addressee, having as the basis for our work the Bakhtin Circle’s dialogical theory of discourse. The results highlight the fact that the positioning assumed by the interlocutors is built from the value attributed to its construction by the other; the clash among the interlocutors is constitutive of the utterances; and the dialogic analysis of the media utterances contributes to a better understanding of the social nature of discourse and of the themes which are relevant to society, in this case, the quotas.