A produção discursiva da moral no gênero fofoca: elementos para uma descrição micro e macrossocial da conversação cotidiana

Abstract

This work deals with the production of moralizing meanings within colloquial spoken discourse – via the gossip genre – under the perspective of the dialectic relationship between the discursive events and the situational as well as the socio-cultural contexts. The aim of the research is, thus, to describe, interpret, and explain the linguistic characteristics of gossips and their social effects within relevant situational as well as socio-cultural contexts. Being a product of the tension between two social systems – interaction, which gives precedence to present participants, and society, which claims its neutrality, gossips make up a research object that requires both an interactional and a systemic argumentation. Accordingly, we second our investigation about this genre’s role within society’s communicative inventory upon analytical tools that allow a combination of or an exchange between the relevant systemic references. We introduce an integrating approach that unites some language and discourse perspectives with sociological theory and research. More specifically, we articulate the analysis of the conversational events with ethnographic and socio-interactional concepts in order to explore, next, the ideological effects of discursive practices by way of Systemic-Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. For the purpose of contributing to the formulation of a social theory of gossip, we also demonstrate that the conceptual repertoire of Systems Theory is so open and flexible that it can integrate the empirical results arrived at through the other approaches at the same time as it uses its own tools to explain the interactional system as an autonomous form of communication. Methodologically, we make an inventory of the typical characteristics of individual samples of gossip, reconstructed in transcriptions of recordings done on minidisc. Firstly, we focus upon the interactional order, that is, upon issues relative to the interaction sequencing, the conversational schemes and patterns, turn taking, and the contextualization hints that signal the interpretative frame relevant for the different contributions. Secondly, we draw our attention more towards the semantic level, willing to learn how the ideational and interpersonal aspects acquire, via the different textual elements, meaning aimed at construing a coherent unity. Thirdly, we focus upon issues concerning the interrelationship between the interactional system’s microtext and society’s macrostructures, raising questions as with how the verbal microinteractions are determined by the social macrostructures and how the former can contribute cumulatively to the latter’s reproduction. The findings show that gossiping is a functionally suitable response to a certain communicative problem imposed both by the context of the conversational interaction and by the socio-cultural environment: Gossips might be considered as a communicative genre that contributes to the discoursive production of a society’s morality. Upon meeting such a communicative purpose, they bring together two communicative strategies: They serve to avoid the moral conflict with present persons and simultaneously thematize its cause within a conversation with a third party.