A construção do ator da enunciação na imprensa feminista do século XIX: análise semiótica dos jornais La Citoyenne e La Fronde

Abstract

In this work, attention is turned to the study of discourses that make up the history of struggles undertaken by French women in the 19th century, with Discursive Semiotics or Greimassian semiotics as the main theoretical reference. The phenomenon of the erasure of women's history throughout the 19th century is the result of different political and social factors. It is, above all, the result of discourses constructed from the male perspective, or limited by the field of world perception of literate women. There are few materials produced by women, focused on their needs and their longings for change, which in fact allow the understanding of the world of this social group. The XIX century marks, besides, the appearance of a 'feminist' press, being this a rich corpus to be studied. From this perspective, we seek to build, in and through discourse, the image of the enunciator and enunciatee (actors of enunciation), from the study of two newspapers written mainly by women and published in the second half of the nineteenth century, La Citoyenne and La Fronde, and reflect on its implications for the understanding of the history of women. In a first moment, we will elucidate the historical aspects that allow us to illustrate the context of the 19th century in France, focusing on the movements that were directly or indirectly related to women's struggle. In the second moment, we will present the theoretical framework on which this research is based, the discursive semiotics, especially the composition of the parcours génératif du sens. Next, we will continue the analysis of the first five editorials published by La Citoyenne and La Fronde, focusing especially on the discursive level of the parcours génératif du sens. As a result, we can observe the construction of two different types of discourses, one openly revolutionary and the other inclined to conservative values. Finally, we see the construction of a subversive discourse that shouts out its defended ideals, alongside another that constructs its point of view between the lines of its texts; they are paradoxical discourses, but they are based on a common cause, namely: women's struggle for rights. Thus, we confirm the hypothesis of the contribution of the discourses built inside both newspapers to the feminist movement that we understand in contemporaneity. We also point out the appeal to French women overshadowed by history and who are actively present in the speeches given by La Citoyenne and La Fronde newspapers.