A construção da imagem de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: o ethos mítico no discurso político

Abstract

This interdisciplinary research presents a study on the manifestation of the mythical ethos in political discourse. The main objective is to investigate the predominant characteristics of the mythical ethos and the factors, internal and external to the discourse, that lead to its consolidation, transforming a person with the status of ordinary citizen into a political myth. The corpus consists of four speeches by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, extracted from different moments of his political career (divided, for the purpose of organizing of the research, in the syndicalist phase, diplomatic phase and mythical phase). About nature, it corresponds to a basic or pure research, new knowledge generated for the advancement of language studies through the understanding of the phenomenon of mythic projection in discourse, the mythical ethos. About instruments, we opted for unstructured observation. We searched Lula's speeches selected for this research for the factors that caused transformations in his image over time and consolidation of the consequent mythical ethos. About the objectives, it consists in an exploratory research. Understanding that the chosen theme is far from being exhausted, we will go on with the task of providing an approximate overview of the phenomenon of mythical ethos, with the aim of formulating searchable hypotheses for further studies. About the procedures, it consists of an ex-post-facto research. We investigate possible cause-and-effect relationships between the elements that influence the construction of Lula's political image and the phenomenon of consolidation of the mythical ethos. The categories applied in our analyzes were the circumstances of discourse, the communication contract, the discursive strategies, the influence of ethos and pathos and the mythical ethos. We adopted the nomenclature used by Charaudeau when dealing with the elements of the enunciative scene: enunciator and co-enunciator, speaker and interlocutor, enunciating subject and interpreting subject. About approaching and presentation of results, we followed the qualitative model. We highlighted from the four discourses elements that evidence the formative characteristics of Lula's political image and seek, in the observation of these characteristics themselves, to understand the formation of the mythical ethos. The theoretical reference is based on Semiolinguistics of Discourse Analysis, by Patrick Charaudeau. The categories of analysis applied were the modes of organization of the discourse, the socio-discursive imaginaries, the circumstances of discourse, the communication contract, the discursive strategies and the characteristics of ethos and pathos in each discourse. The theoretical basis employs the definitions of ethos and pathos in Charaudeau (2007, 2016a, 2016b, 2018), myth in Barthes (2013) and political mythologies in Girardet (1987). In order to understand the process of acceptance of the mythical image by interpreting subjects, we felt the necessity to bring to our analysis the notions of Identity (HALL, 2003, 2005; BAUMAN, 2005) and Politeness (BROWN; LEVINSON, 1987) and Face Protection (GOFFMAN, 1967). The focus of this research goes over the image that political actors can project in their speeches, their ethé, and not over their personal characteristics, their identities. However, these self-images constructed within the discourse will not be believable if they do not dialogue at least in part with the identities of those who enunciate. And they will not be accepted if they employ levels of politeness that are inconsistent with the communication situations where they are. We noticed that the mythical ethos overflows the concept of ethos itself and becomes a multiple argumentative strategy, replicating characteristics of the face, or even the social identity of the enunciating subject. The analysis indicates that the mythical ethos in political discourse is a type of pathemic self-image constructed by the interpreting subject inside the interenunciative act, in a psicosociolinguistic moviment of response to the mythical image projected by the enunciating subject.