“Menor”: a mudança de vocábulo como o primeiro despontamento da efetivação de direitos e garantias das crianças e adolescentes

Abstract

The present study is sired on the analysis of the word “minor ones”, so usually used in our society to designate children and teenagers who are perpetrators of infractions. To this end, it was taken into account, initially, the Brazilian legislative historiography documents that relate to the word “minor ones”, the ideological and social inscription of the term, encompassed by the historicity of the voices that constitute and emanate from this lexicon, once the understanding of its discursive formation is necessary to establish or, in this case, to re-establish the terminological issue, a fundamental gear, in terms of paradigms and their overcoming, since language is the first social contact to expose or hide stigmas. The fundamental element to understand the term “minor ones” was originated by a research from the paper Discourse Analysis in its French aspect, extracted from researches by Michel Foucault (1996), Mikhail Bakhtin (2006), José Luiz Fiorin (2011) and Cleudemar Alves Fernandes (2005). In addition, legislative theoretical frameworks are also used referring to the “Minorist Codes” (literal translation) from 1927 and 1979, which emerged as the first specific legislation establishing the rights of the minor ones, the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (1988), known as the Popular Constitution, and the Child and Teenagers Statute. These legal documents emerged as legal milestones in the (formal) recognition that children and teenagers are subjects of rights immersed in a doctrine of Integral Protection, starting to enjoy, with absolute priority, rights inherent to the human person, as well as those that satisfy their characteristics of an growing individual. Hereupon, in conclusion, the presente study shows that it is not just a terminological change or substitution, but in fact a paradigm shift regarding the vision and social conception of children and teenagers, especially those who commit infractions, since the first social disruptive emergence will, in fact, occur through language.