Identificational meanings: ethos and political space in the discursive constitution of feminine social reality

Abstract

Current analysis is based on the theoretical and methodological stanceof the Faircloughian trend in Critical Discourse Analysis. Fairclough(2003) conceives discourse within the confl uence of three types of practice,namely linguistic, discursive and social practice. Analyses discussed inthis research refer to discursive practices of members of the Brazilianparliament who occupy this social and political space to take up themes on‘the female’. The ethos of the political agents involved in such a practice isdebated from identifi cational meanings. It is actually an analytic dimensionwhich, besides actional and representational meanings, is present inFairclough´s theoretical and methodological model for text analysiswithin the social perspective. The text´s arguments from which data incurrent study have been extracted are highly favorable to the inclusion ofaspects investigated by Aristotle (2000) in his Rhetoric of the Passions,such as anger, calmness and grace. They are categories which, amongothers, fi t into particular modes of being (social and personal identities)which are focused in current article. Discussing the political space of thediscourse constitution of the feminine social reality, the article introducesCharaudeau (2006) who calls the above the fabrication sites of politicaldiscourse, or rather, a place of government, opinion and mediation. Thestudy has showed that the parliamentary discursive practices is affectedby the institutional context of the textual production, where the femalethemes is converted into a profi table tool for the parliamentary action, asso for the actuation of the ideologies upon the world life of the femalesrepresented in these practices.