Assim na música como na vida: a representação do trabalho em discursos de canções brasileiras através da análise crítica do discurso

Abstract

The present research aims to analyze the representations of work and workers in Brazilian lyrics using Critical Discourse Analysis at the lexicogrammatical, semantic-discursive and context levels. The theoretical reference entails work and music history and configuration as well as the following theoretical-methodological linguistics aspects: a) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), based primarily on Fairclough (2001a); b) Halliday´s (2004) Systemic-Functional Grammar (SFG), approaching the textual, ideational and interpersonal metafunctions; and c) Appraisal Theory (AT) based on Martin and Rose (2003). Using the CDA theory and the WordSmith Tools, the microanalysis investigates 325 Brazilian lyrics recorded between 1916-2010, which have work and workers as their main theme. We analyze two versions of the same song using the SFG and Appraisal System and, through interviews with songwriters and representatives of the interpretative community, we evaluate the situation context and the perception of such discursive practice. As a result of our analysis we got to the following relevant conclusions: the number of songs focusing the theme of workers is somewhat small, though work plays an extremely important societal role; the work universe represented is masculine and plays down women´s productive capability, depicting them, most of the times, as a simple homemaker and wife/companion; productivity capitalist hegemonic discourse; predominance of a negative view of work; it is assigned various meanings, mainly those connected with financial benefits; the narrator-character´s view on impressions, actions and relations is what prevails; individuality supersedes collectivity; workers experience and report the present moment, hardly turning to the future and much less to the past; the notion of belonging ranks higher, and the subject places thinking on a secondary level and carries out automatically the duties assigned by others. Another relevant conclusion refers to the textual metafunction. For this analysis we suggest the segmentation of songs into melodic phrases instead of traditional grammar clauses in order to get theme and rheme analysis closer to the listener´s actual perception. We also concluded that the result of the analysis for each methodology used corroborates the others, while each theory keeps its particularities regarding the identification of specific aspects.