Media, race, and the construction of the suspect: discursive analysis of Folha de São Paulo news story

• Autor(a) principal: Giorgi, Maria Cristina
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Sampaio de Almeida, Fabio, Silva Paiva, Maria Vitória
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Domínios de Lingu@gem
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/dominiosdelinguagem/article/view/38761
• topic: Produção da suspeita; Linguagem intervenção; Relações Étnico-Raciais; Gênero notícia; Análise do Discurso; Production of Suspicion; Language as intervention; Ethnic-Racial relations; News story genre; Discourse Analysis

The present paper, grounded on an enunciative view of language (MAINGUENEAU, 2013) and of its interventional potential (ROCHA, 2006, 2014), aims at reflecting upon the discursive production of suspicion around black people, and upon their depiction as ‘outcasts’, in the discursive constructions of such a population which are being made by the media in connection to discourses which circulate in other spheres, such as those of police and judicial practices. We see language as a social practice (BAKHTIN, 1995; 1997) which, socio-historically situated and crisscrossed by power-knowledge relations (FOUCAULT, 2013; 2013a), not only represents, but intervenes upon a given reality. As for the racial question, we subscribe to Guimarães’ understanding (2006; 2009) that such a process derives from colonization practices, which deprived African people of their identity, and that it is reinforced in discourses which aim at maintaining the hegemonic group’s privileges. In order to do so, in line with Paiva’s (2015) investigation, we have selected a news story from Folha de São Paulo’s archives, and we have performed a discursive analysis. Results indicate that, in name of the neutrality and the impartiality which tend to be seen as characteristics of the genre, the newspaper, in reporting on an event, constructs and reaffirms its political positioning in alignment with hegemonic discourses enunciated by dominant groups.