A construção da narrativa científica nas Ciências Humanas: análise discursiva de editoriais da revista Varia Historia (2007 2016)

Abstract

This research intends to analyze the main discursive and argumentative strategies in the editorials of Varia Historia, a journal of national and international relevance. The focus on the period between 2007 and 2016 aimed at disclosing the construction of scientific narrative in humanities through History. For this purpose, a Content Analysis (CA) was performed in order to organize the corpus which was studied through Discourse Analysis (DA) in the scope of Patrick Charaudeaus Semiolinguistics theory. On the basis of a triangular situation constituted by an argumentative subject (here represented by the publisher of Varia Historia), a target subject (the readers of the magazine), and a proposition about the world, this thesis aims at building a premise for the acting of both subjects. Twenty-three editorials were analyzed as a corpus from which thirty-one representative excerpts were extracted for argumentative analysis. Using this method, the research has found answers to the following specific objectives: a) identifying discursive formations which appear in the editorials of the journal above mentioned; b) analyzing the construction of scientific narrative in the area of humanities with basis on the semiolinguistics theory by Patrick Charaudeau; c) understanding how the concept of science is built by narratives in the journals editorials. The identification of discursive formations in excerpts taken from editorials enabled the analysis and comprehension of the construction of the scientific narrative. In sum, by the analysis of the editorials it was possible to understand the objects potential as a political-scientific instance and a practice inside a field of knowledge. A fruitful theoretical and methodological combination between Discourse Analysis, Content Analysis and a new objectthe scientific editorialenabled the comprehension of discursive elements in theeditorials.They unveil the establishment of the concept of science in accordance with discussions concerning scientific neutrality, construction of academic knowledge and its relations to lay knowledge, politics as a historical subject and, at last, the dissemination of knowledge in History.