Correspondências do cárcere: um estudo sobre a linguagem de prisioneiros

Abstract

The objective of this research was the analysis of a group of prisoners letters searching to identify what they mean to theirs authors and the discursive dimension found in this epistolary genre. Taking the concept of language as discuss and considering the social-historic context and the productive conditions, we sought to understand the representations created by the authors about themselves and his ideal interlocutor, the judge, and the meaning of the letters as well. The research corpus is composed by eighty letters written by prisoners from several carceral establishments, directed to the judges of the Justice Court of Minas Gerais, Brazil. We sought to understand the writing of the prisoners through a methodology essentially qualitative Discourse Analysis and Content Analysis), to be able to identify who talks, to whom, what is said, how it is said and why they talk. The work is split in four chapters. In the first, we reflect about the place where the letter was produced, the prison, her representation in the media, the justice crises and the figures of prisoner and judge as speaker and ideal interlocutor, respectively; in the second chapter, we had a dialogue with the main theorists that conduct the research, Bakhtin and Bourdieu, on the fields of philosophy of language and sociology; in the third chapter, we did a study about literary prison letters in the works of Gracíliano Ramos (Memórias do Cárcere), Tchékhov (Cartas a Suvórin), Joel Rufino dos Sanos (Quando eu voltei, tive uma surpresa), Frei Betto (Cartas da Prisão) and Oscar Wilde (De Profundis); in the fourth chapter we presented the methodology of data treatment and weproceed with the actual analyses. The research showed the dialogical character of the prisoner discuss, the style and the expressivity of the enouncement. We noted that the prisoner have awareness of the unequal symbolic value of his discuss in the market of linguistic exchange. We also noted the meaningful role of the media in the reproduction of the criminal stereotypes. Plus, the study showed the absence of difficulty in the objective comprehensionof the enouncement, albeit the lower level of formal education of the individuals, evidencing that the prisoner is alphabetized, from the point of view understood by the Education. Finally, we noted that the prisoner have lower receptivity from the part of his ideal interlocutor, since few letters reach the judge, being, the majority, answered bureaucratic by the employers of the Justice Court of Minas Gerais.