O processo referencial da dêixis: por uma proposta de recategorização

Abstract

Usually interpreted as a textual-discursive phenomenon and used as theoretical basis that focus on dynamic aspects about the construction of references, referentiantion has attracted the scholars’ attention for this relevance to production and understanding of meaning. Among the main principles to construct referents, it is the negotiation between speakers as well as the socio-cognitive nature of referents, this last one being considered in the perspective about the instability of reality. Cavalcante, Custódio Filho and Brito (2014) claim that initial reference, anaphora and deixis are three major categories for referential processes. According to this view, this study aims to analyze deictic referential processes, focusing on its recategorization role in narrative genres in order to answer the question: how does it apply the use of deictic expressions and discursive functions of deictic referential developing process to the constitution of genres with a predominance of narrative sequences? Initially I selected some concepts namely: 1) the deictic reinterpretation (LYONS, 1977); 2) the inter-subjectivity relation among speaker, discourse and context (CAVALCANTE, 2000), 3) the previous referent can change at any time while the discursive interaction occurs (CHAROLLES; SCHNEDECKER, 1993a) and 4) the evolution of referent, as advocated by Apothéloz and Reichler-Béguelin (1995), Cavalcante (2011), Koch (2004b). Based on these studies, I developed the hypothesis that the use of deictic expressions and socio-discursive functions of the deictic referential developing process is responsible to form a deictic chain in the constitution of genres with a predominance of narrative sequences. Plus an extensive research, 30 texts of different genres were selected, the analysis were conducted considering personal, temporal and spatial categories, 5 chains of each category. Since the role of deictic expressions expand the understanding of deictic processes in Textual Linguistics field, I present a list of the main features observed without develop a general framework as proposed by Cavalcante (2000) and Ciulla (2008). The results show that, in the formation of chains, deictic expressions had been changed, as the Deictic Shift Theory proposes, and these changes are, in fact, deictic expressions re-categorized.