Discourses unveiled: a study of dialogic movements in contemporary short stories

ARTICLES

Discourses unveiled: a study of dialogic movements in contemporary short stories

Adriana Dias Marcia Kraemer^I; Maria Alba Perfeito^II

^I PhD student at Universidade Estadual de Londrina – UEL, Londrina, Paraná, Brazil; CAPES scholarship; [e-mail]

^IIProfessor at Universidade Estadual de Londrina – UEL, Londrina, Paraná, Brazil; [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

This article consists of a partial report of our doctoral research, within an ethnographic approach. We investigated the process of continuing education of high school teachers, from the public school system, who adopt the short story genre as their study subject in their teaching project. The literary text is analyzed based on Applied Linguistics and the Sociological Theory of Language, revealing the several dialogic movements in the dynamics of verbal interaction. Understanding the dialogue implies observing these forms and how they are perceived, and as they take on a role in language, they may influence in a regulatory, stimulating or inhibiting manner, the development of susceptibility to appreciative apprehension, whose field of action is precisely defined by the dynamic interaction of the two dimensions involved in the narrative context: the discourse to be transmitted and the channel used to transmit it.

Keywords: Short Story; Dialogism; Discourses.

RESUMO

Este artigo apresenta resultados parciais de nossa pesquisa de doutoramento de cunho etnográfico. Nela, investigamos o processo de formação continuada do professor de ensino médio, da rede pública, que adota o gênero discursivo conto como objeto de estudo em seu projeto de trabalho docente. O texto literário em foco é analisado sob a ótica da Linguística Aplicada e da Teoria Sociológica da Linguagem, revelando os vários movimentos dialógicos na dinâmica da interação verbal. Com efeito, compreender o diálogo pressupõe observar essas formas e essa recepção, as quais, na medida em que assumem uma função na língua, podem influenciar de maneira reguladora, estimulante ou inibidora, sobre o desenvolvimento das propensões à apreensão apreciativa, cujo campo de ação é justamente definido pela interação dinâmica das duas dimensões inseridas no contexto narrativo: o discurso a transmitir e aquele que serve para transmiti-lo.

Palavras-chave: Conto; Dialogismo; Discursos.

Introduction

Thinking of language from the Bakhtinian perspective is having a conception of language as inserted discourse, materially and vividly, in its entirety, within society. Undertaking studies in this field of knowledge, for Bakhtin (1999), requires the metalinguistic perception that aspects of discursive essence are focused on the dialogic relationships that constitute the life of language.

[...] linguistics studies "language" itself and the logic specific to it in its capacity as a common ground, as that which makes possible dialogic interaction; consequently, linguistics distances itself from the actual dialogic relationships themselves. These relationships lie in the realm of discourse, for discourse is by its very nature dialogic; they must therefore be studied by metalinguistics, which exceeds the limits of linguistics and has its own independent subject matter and tasks (p.183).

From this perspective, we consider that the logical and concrete-semantic relationships, in order to become dialogical, need to be materialized in a field of existence that enables viewing them as concrete statements, in a specific socio-historical-cultural context, with its own theme, and before which we react responsively.

Therefore, our object of study is bivocal discourse, intrinsic to conditions of dialogic communication, in a linguistic material consisting of the living word, which is the literary genre short story, since in this realm, discourse, according to Bakhtin, transmits more subtlety all the transformations in socio-verbal inter-orientation.

1 The discourse of the other

Reported speech is speech within speech, utterance within utterance, and at the same time also speech about speech, utterance about utterance.

VOLOŠINOV

Bakhtin’s studies on discourse are extensive and his thought on language is primarily philosophical. His view of language as activity, not as a system, proceeding from the overall work of the Circle

These pillars are treated by the researcher in a sociological perspective, from relationships between language and society, inserted in a historical, cultural and ideological context. In this context, sign becomes the guiding element, deriving from social structures filled with ideologies, whose universe of creation is essentially semiotic. If we understand sign as a word, then it is all coated with a heteroglossic aura and charged with such an ideology which assigns meaning to discourse.

The identification of the ideological with the semiotic establishes studies of the Circle in the construction of a materialist theory for analyzing processes and products of immaterial culture. From this perspective, members of this group considered that a product of ideological creation is always a sign, which is produced and understood in the processes of social relationships.

The concept that relationships in society are semiotically mediated comes from this perception, since the real never comes to us directly, but through a pathway represented and materialized as a signifier. Moreover, since signs have an axiological dimension, our interaction with the world is always permeated by values, in which the word is surrounded by an atmosphere of social discourse.

From this point of view, the idea of discourse permeated by the voice of others, namely, that brings the other in its composition, becomes one of the principles of Bakhtinian thought, and the foundation of his concept of dialogism, for treating discourse as a self, composed by voices of different individual enunciators. Thus, we know signs not only reflect what surrounds us, but also refract the events, since, when we read or tell the world, this action is permeated by the axiological heterogeneity. We therefore understand that refraction is a necessary condition of the sign in that sense.

From this observation, language can be understood as an indefinite set of social voices, also known as heteroglossia and plurilingualism (FARACO, 2009, p.59), which continuously interact with each other in a multiform way, entangled in a responsive chain. What is real is not presented to us semiotically, which implies that our discourse does not relate directly to things, but with other discourses, which semiotize the world.

So dialogism is the real mode of operation of the language: directed to its object, the discourse enters this dialogically troubled and tense environment of discourse of others, judgments and intonations. It blends with them in complex interactions, merging with some and isolating themselves from others, intersecting with others; and all this can shape the discourse substantially, penetrate all its semantic layers, make its expression complex, influence its stylistic aspect.

We see, therefore, a great affinity with Bakhtin's metaphor of dialogue, considered as a space where you can observe the dynamics of the interaction of social voices. It is important to realize that this should not be seen in the strict sense because it would not meet the needs of this theory, but as "[...] the complex of forces operating in the dialogue and determining the form and meaning of what is said." (FARACO, 2009, p.61).

For the double oriented discourse in Vološinov (1973), a differentiating study of the phenomena that characterizethem is considered necessary.

The productive study of dialogue presupposes, however, a more profound investigation of the forms used in reported speech, since these forms reflect basic and constant tendencies in the active reception of other speakers’ speech, and it is this reception, after all, that is fundamental also for dialogue (p.117).

A careful analysis of the process of materializing the discourse allows identifying stable social trends inherent of active apprehension of the discourse of others which is manifested in the forms of language. The mechanism of this process is found in the discourses of a linguistic community: depending on the production situation, the social horizon, the process of evaluation and thematic, the subjects choose the elements of the other’s enunciation that are considered relevant and continuous in this society, having as a basis economic, cultural, ideological, political understanding, among others, which prevail in this community.

The circumstances under which transmission occurs and the aims it pursues merely contribute to the implementation of what is already lodged in the tendencies of active reception by one’s innerspeech consciousness. And these tendencies, for their part, can only develop within the framework of the forms used to report speech in a given language (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.117).

Although the process is not accomplished directly as, for example, direct or indirect discourse, structural models used to mark the voice of the other, these patterns and their variants become clear in common use because they are considered effective for this purpose, exerting, according to Vološinov (1973), a regulatory power over the process of responsive apprehension.

Language reflects, not subjective, psychological vacillations, but stable social interrelationships among speakers. Various linguistic forms of these interrelationships, and various modifications of these forms, prevail in different languages at different periods of time within different social groups and under the effect of different contextual aims. What this attests to is the relative strength or weakness of those tendencies in the social inter-orientation of a community of speakers, of which the given linguistic forms themselves are stabilized and age-old crystallizations (p.118).

We noticed, having the heading of this section in mind, that reported speech is not exhausted in the citation, and should be considered as an action resulting in a response from the other. Thus, as proclaimed Faraco (2009, p.140), quoting in not just to reproduce, to repeat, but to establish a link between two dimensions: the discourse which refers to and the discourse which is referred to.

A reported utterance […] is not just a theme of speech: it has the capacity of entering on its own, so to speak, into speech, into its syntactic makeup, as an integral unit of the construction. In so doing, it retains its own constructional and semantic autonomy while leaving the speech texture of the context incorporating it perfectly intact (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p. 115).

2 The bivocal discourse in contemporary short story

From considerations about the heteroglossic nature of the word, we present an analysis of direct, indirect discourses and its variants, in a Bakhtinian proposal, through the genre short stories, in order not to exhaust the text in all its possibilities, but to illustrate a thought from Applied Linguistics and Sociological Theory of Language point of view, on delimitation of voices within the discourse.

The choice is justified, because, in our doctoral research, we studied the process of continuing education of public high school teachers, which adopt short story genre as an object of study in their teaching project, in order to develop reading and writing skills, through linguistic analysis, in mother tongue teaching.

At the schooling stage researched, literary genres are prevalent as study material and, for this reason, short story is considered feasible to think about the materialization of language, by its enunciative nature. It is also important to understand that the producer of a written short story assumes the social role of a storyteller, someone who creates an impression of objectivity and relies on a dynamic time, with a succession of events and transformations of events told (ABDALA JÚNIOR, 1995; PATRINI, 2005).

The distinguishing factor of the genre is brevity, however, not based on its effects, but on its causes. For Friedman (MAY, 1976), the question is whether to cause or not to cause a greater impact on the reader. The aim, therefore, is to differentiate itself by contraction: the storyteller condenses the subject to present their best moments.

The delimitation of the short story nowadays interests us because there is, in it, recurrence of thematic approaches, which retrieve the various forms of representation of the contemporary human being, materializing his/her self-awareness. Narrative structures of this genre provide the study related to the context of literary production today, highlighting: intensification of playfulness in the creation, deliberate use of bivocality, stylistic eclecticism, metalanguage exercise, textual fragmentism, ideological criticism, plural view of the construction of a national reality.

From this perspective, Lygia Fagundes Telles’s short stories, which will illustrate the analysis, were also selected, because she is among the authors suitable for being in this research, due to her contribution to modern and contemporary Brazilian literature.

With a distinctly personal style, without submitting to colloquialism, the writer makes recurrences in her texts to precise dialogues, which capture the subtle nuances of thoughts and feelings, bringing to light conflicts underlying every one's soul. In her short stories, psychological factor almost always predominates over the factual: what engages the reader seems to be the atmosphere created, what is sensed, what is said subliminally.

Using a very well-articulated narrative technique, Telles creates small incidents, seemingly trivial, overlays to them facts and details to form a climate of tension and expectation of an imminent, shocking drama. The reader, part of the story, engages in the construction of the text, in which plot weaves continuously and gives meaning to the narrative, through their inferences, interacting dialogically with the writing.

The force of the word, of an intimate nature, makes reading Lygia's stories an interesting experience. Because of its characteristic, her work is a constant presence in publishing, in the collection of public libraries or school and in classrooms, in collections prepared to basic, primary and secondary education. Also, it is required reading in several federal, state and private college entrance exams.

As an illustration of the empirical section of our research, we present an analysis of some movements in the dialogic narrative with short stories excerpts from the book Come to see the sunset, from Lygia Fagundes Telles Collection

There are many linguistic resources which embody the different voices in the texts, as the characters dialogue, express their ideas, their feelings and opinions. Regarding short story, when the narrator tells the story, talking about what happens and what the characters say, he uses a speech that is not his own, quoting others’ voices. There are mechanisms for reproducing it, like:

a) direct discourse, in which the narrator quotes someone else’s discourse, seeking to represent their speech (VOLOŠINOV, 1973);

b) indirect discourse in which "[...] ‘hears’ a message differently; it actively receives and brings to bear in transmission different factors, different aspects of the message than do the other patterns" (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.129);

c) quasi-direct discourse, as the one which is "The most important and […] the most syntactically standardized case of an interferential merging of two differently oriented discourse acts […]" (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.137).

It is suitable to analyze the fact that, to the authors, there are variants of both direct and indirect discourse, according to the narrative intentionality. According to Vološinov (1973), in their studies of Russian, French and German variants of the basis schemes towards the representation of someone else’s discourse indicate the power relationship established between authorial context and discourse quoted in communicative interaction situations.

Among them, we have highlighted:

a) prepared direct discourse, being the one emerging from the indirect discourse, weakening the objectivity of the authorial context;

b) particularized direct discourse, where narrative situation is built so that the semantic force of the quoted words is weakened before appreciation and emotional value contained in representation;

c) anticipated, dispersed quoted discourse, which, although hidden in the authorial context, is emphasized in the hero’s direct discourse, emphasizing his intonation;

d) rhetorical direct discourse, which can be interpreted as a question or an exclamation made by both the narrator and the character;

e) and, finally, substituted direct discourse, in which substitution presupposes parallel intonations of narrator and character, in which the former appears in his hero’s place.

It is also interesting to mention indirect discourse variants: one, having the trend of the other's analytical discourse, often eliminating emotional or affective elements present in the content plan, but expressed "[...] in the form of a message." (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.128); the other, analyzing expression, through which words can be observed and studied, how the other says, usually marked by quotation marks.

It is noteworthy that discourses and their variants are inserted in two orientation styles presented by Vološinov (1973): linear and picturesque. The first direction in which the dynamism of the inter-orientation between reporting and reported discourse creates external contours for reported discourse, corresponding, according to the authors, to a weakness of the internal individual factor. "Wherever the entire context displays a complete stylistic homogeneity (in which the author and his characters all speak exactly the same language), the grammatical and compositional manipulation of reported speech achieves a maximal compactness and plastic relief" (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.120).

We take the example of reporting and reported discourse in the short story Come see the sunset, where the author presents the story, in a single episode, about a couple who used to date and have reunited after a long time, in an abandoned cemetery. In the text, the predominant orientation is the linear style of both the narrator's and characters' discourses, plastically well contoured.

He waited for her leaning against a tree, slender and thin, dressed in a navy blue sweater, long and disheveled hair, had the youthful way of a student.

- My dear Rachel.

She stared at him, seriously. And looked down at her own shoes.

- See that mud. Only you could invent a meeting in a place like this. What an idea, Ricardo what an idea! I had to get off the taxi over there; he would never come up here.

He laughed, a little naughty and naive.

- Never? I thought you would come sportingly dressed and now you show up all elegant. When you walked with me, you used to wear those galoshes, remember?

- You made me come up here just to tell me that? - she asked, holding her gloves in her purse. She took a cigarette. - Huh?! (TELLES, 2008, p. 26).

The linear style serves the story for being a discursive strategy that makes the reader a participant in the story, once he/she becomes witness to the events represented, where the focus is dramatized, with a predominance of the scene rather than a summary. Through an unassuming, jovial language, the characters' profiles are described in indirect predication, and physical environment, the atmosphere of the place, directly, through the narrator’s voice, in a few interventions, being characterized as an indirect speech, in which not only content but also expression are analyzed.

For the first modification, the speaker’s individuality is a factor only as it occupies some specific ideational position (epistemological, ethical, existential, or behavioral), and beyond that position (which is transmitted in strictly referential terms) it has no existence for the reporter. There is no wherewithal here for the speaker’s individuality to congeal into an image (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.132).

This organizational confluence creates, to the reader a perspective of acceptance of the discourse of the protagonist Ricardo, and in the end be impacted with the breaking of expectations, with an unexpected and open outcome. Thus, although the linear style is considered a weakening of the individual factor and the internal discourse constructed as being the other's to achieve great sobriety, the story in question is a condition leading to the creative work of language, according to the theme, the production situation, the social horizon and the evaluative appreciation that affect the writing.

The picturesque style, in turn, is characterized as a representation of the realistic and critical individualism, in which "The impetus for weakening the peripheries of the utterance may originate in the author's context, in which case that context permeates the reported speech with its own intonation-humor, irony, love or hate, enthusiasm or scorn." (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.121); or what represents relativistic individualism, in which the dialogical movement is directed to reported discourse, and authorial context loses the objectivity which is its characteristic.

It begins to perceive itself – and even recognizes itself-as subjective, "other person’s" speech. In works of fiction, this is often expressed compositionally by the appearance of a narrator who replaces the author (in the usual sense of the word). The narrator’s speech is just as individualized, colorful, and nonauthoritative as is the speech of the characters. The narrator's position is fluid, and in the majority of cases he uses the language of the personages depicted in the work. He cannot bring to bear against their subjective position a more authoritative and objective world (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.121).

The second orientation happens, therefore, by developing mixed models transmission of speech, in which predominate the variants of direct and indirect discourse that have more flexibility and are more permeable in relation to the tendencies of the authorial context. An example of such an orientation appears in the short story The Bridegroom. It is about the story of Miguel, a 40-year-old man, lawyer of Goldsmith company.

One morning, Michael is awakened by his maid, who tells him he is late for his wedding. However, the unusual is that he does not remember anything about the appointment, much less about the bride: lacunar amnesia. Therefore, a search process starts toward the climax: who will be the one who waits forhim at the altar?

He laid his head on the back of the bed. Wedding time. But what wedding? Today is Thursday, right? Thursday, November 12. So? Who gets married today? I have no wedding scheduled for today. And early in the morning... His eyes wandered around the room. She was getting too old, poor she, that was atherosclerosis, figure it out, knocking at the door like that, "time of the wedding! ..." He yawned. The objects in the room floated shapeless in the darkness. He thought of a sinking into a deep sea. So poetic. He squinted and settled in the oval mirror that emerged from the shadows like a bright fish. Thursday twelve. "What is this wedding? I know nothing..." (TELLES, 2008, p.7).

The plot unfolds in a chronology of a few hours, but the character remembers his whole life, what he considered an insane moment. The narrator is heterodiegetic, giving voice to the character through mainly using two variants of direct speech: substituted and prepared speech. In the first type, according to Vološinov (1973), it lacks the specific boundary between narrator’s voice and flow of thought of the hero.

In the example cited, extracted from the story, the questions introduce the protagonist’s deliberations or the narration of his actions. These questions constitute both a narrator’s and character proposition when the latter is in a conflict situation. However, to Vološinov (1973), it is narrator's voice which predominates, assuming the scene and replacing the protagonist’s one. Because the narrator is the spokesman of the hero’s speech, the questions are not enclosed in quotation marks.

The above characteristic, in The Bridegroom, provides a balance between style and theme, ensuring the verisimilitude to the text, which intends to express thoughts, desires, the character’s internal chaos before something so unusual.

As Vološinov (1973), in this orientation of the dynamics of the relationship between enunciation and reported speech, inserted in the pictorial style, we can notice the development of subtle linguistic strategies to allow the author to insert their replies and comments in the discourse of the other.

The reporting context strives to break down the self-contained compactness of the reported speech, to resolve it, to obliterate its boundaries. We may call this style of speech reporting pictorial. Its tendency is to obliterate the precise, external contours of reported speech; at the same time, the reported speech is individualized to a much greater degree-the tangibility of the various facets of an utterance may be subtly differentiated. This time the reception includes not only the referential meaning of the utterance, the statement it makes, but also all the linguistic peculiarities of its verbal implementation (p.120-121).

In the same excerpt from The Bridegroom, also direct discourse, when quoted, is prepared by the indirect, allowing glimpsing the nature of the texture-analyzing modification.

[…] the nature of the texture-analyzing modification of the indirect discourse […] creates highly original pictorial effects in reported speech transmission. It is a modification that presupposes the presence in the linguistic consciousness of a high degree of individualization of other speakers’ utterances and an ability to perceive differentially the verbal envelope of an utterance and its referential meaning. (VOLOŠINOV, 1973, p.132).

So it is possible to understand that, to the Circle thinkers, at the time the reported speech is integrated into the narrative discourse, it becomes part of the thematic unity of the text, being manifested through stable constructs of the language itself which transmits active relation of one message to another.

3 Proposal of a Teaching Work Plan: an excerpt of the materialization of discourses in The Bridegroom.

As an illustration of the workshop that integrates the empirical part of our research, we will present the proposed module that handles the narrative The Bridegroom, in 1964, recently published in the book Come to see the sunset, from Lygia Fagundes Telles Collection, belonging to the contemporary period of Brazilian literature.

Regarding the steps of the Teaching Work Plan (GASPARIN, 2007), in order to study the short story above, we present a review of them which consist of detailing:

a) initial practice of the contents: contents display of the activities set that will be taught, its objectives, topics and subtopics, favoring the mobilization of the student for the knowledge construction in school. It is the student’s initial contact with the subject being studied, in which the teacher encourages the rescue of what the student already knows, as well as probes what he wants to know about it challengingly to the apprehension of new knowledge;

b) problematization phase: identification of the main problems posed by social practice and the content and discussion about it, seeking to turn challenges into problematizing questions;

c) instrumentation: emphasis on teachers and students actions needed for the construction of scientific knowledge, in which the whole process of teaching and learning is referred to confront the study subjects with the object of systematic knowledge;

d) catharsis: basic operation of the synthesis, in which the contents and processes of knowledge construction are systematized, as a way of expression for setting-up a new way to understand the social practice;

e) proposed action: from the content learned, includes the resumption of social practice, in which we transpose theory to practice regarding the objectives of the unit studied, to the dimensions of content and the concepts acquired.

In this article, we will delimit sample to instrumentalization, to catharsis and to final social practice. As the instrumentation is the time to materialize earlier phases of planning and to elucidate on the language resources that emerge and stand out in the text, this phase is appropriate to consider that, in the short story studied, the indirect discourse, the direct discourse and its variants are a conducive environment to realize the dialogic movement.

Given these assumptions, it is relevant for the teacher, together with the student, to survey marks that indicate the presence of discursive voices, seeking to distinguish its implementation. Then the mediator can create, with the class, a comparative table, showing discourse characteristics with fragments of the narrative analyzed.

Still, after this survey, there may be a reflection on the effect of meaning resulting from the use of speech towards the text, including variants of the direct and indirect discourse, as the narrative intentionality.

Thus, an illustration of this proposal is presented in Table 1.

Therefore, it is possible to verify whether the students perceive this characteristic in the short story analysis and how they perceive it; which linguistic marks of this kind of linguistic discourse are noticeable in the narrative; and also with what intent it is used and what effects of meaning it can cause in reading.

For the workshop, we decided to produce activities targeted by the Teaching Work Plan in order to analyze the short story The Bridegroom, with word games. At the stage of exploitation, one of the proposals concerned, through a keyword presented in a board of Cruzadox, students learning the verbs used by the narrator to construct his discourse in the text, , for instance, distinguishing its inflexion, its verbal aspect and which effect of meaning its use causes.

From this activity, it is possible to question them about: what is the role of the narrator in the short story? By what means of discourse is the materialization of his/her voice done? What is the effect of meaning that such use causes? What is the difference of meaning when the narrator uses verbs in the Past Perfect or Used to? And so on.

At the stage of catharsis, in which the student summarizes what he/she has learned, he/she will probably be able to analyze more appropriately the concepts of direct, indirect discourses and their variants; their function and organization into a narrative as in The Bridegroom; what is the effect of meaning caused by their use in the story; why it isimportant to the student to recognize such a strategy to his/her ability to read and write; whether such a strategy is easy or difficult to understand – among other possibilities.

To achieve this stage in our workshop, we proposed a board of crosswords, from the intersection of questions and information; in order to demonstrate how much new knowledge they have acquired from the activity.

In thefinal social practice, after studying the story The bridegroom and strategies to play the discourse of the other in the text, it is interesting to ask students to organize intentions and proposals for action, aiming to show the contents.

One possibility requested is to produce a short story, collectively, whose unusual, fantastic-realism theme is present, with emphasis on building compositional to rhetoric direct discourse, prepared and substituted, prevailing in the short story, and on the lexicogrammatical choices that give support to this intentionality.

Another suggestion can be individual faction, in which each one continues with the narrative from the climax, producing an unusual ending, attempting to break the expectation of the reader, using the same characteristics as the previous proposal.

Conclusion

We sought in this study, resulting from our doctorate research, to present reflections on some dialogical movements in verbal interaction dynamics, with emphasis on direct and indirect discourse, as well as some of their variations in order to analyze how they are processed in contemporary stories, from the viewpoint of Applied Linguistics and assumptions of Bakhtin Circle.

Therefore, understanding the dialogue includes analyzing the discourse materialization and its reception, because, since these two factors constitute a linguistic function, they may exert centripetal or centrifugal forces on the appreciative value of the text producer, whose jurisdiction is determined by the dynamic relationship of the two dimensions included in the narrative context: the discourse for transmitting and the one to transmit it.

REFERENCES

• ABDALA JUNIOR, B. Introdução à análise da narrativa. São Paulo: Scipione, 1995.
• BAKHTIN, M.M. Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski. Trad. Paulo Bezerra. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2010.
• ______ Estética da criação verbal. Trad. Paulo Bezerra. 4. ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2006.
• BAKHTIN, M. (VOLOCHÍNOV, V. N.) Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem: problemas fundamentais do método sociológico da linguagem. 12. ed. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2006.
• ______ Questões de literatura e de estética: a teoria do romance. Trad. Aurora F. Bernardini et al. 2 ed. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1998.
• FARACO, C. A. Linguagem & diálogo: as ideias linguísticas do Círculo de Bakhtin. São Paulo: Parábola, 2009.
• PATRINI, M. L. A renovação do conto: emergência de uma prática oral. São Paulo: Cortez, 2005.
• TELLES, L. F. Venha ver opôr-do-sol & outros contos. 5. ed. São Paulo: Ática, 2008. [Coleção Lygia Fagundes Telles]

¹

, points out to three main axes: the uniqueness and eventness of Being; the contraposition of self/other, and the axiological component intrinsic to human existence.

²

In the Bakhtinian perspective, every statement has a double dimension, as it reveals two positions: yours and the other's. Even if the answer characterizes a concordance with the enunciator, it takes place at the point of tension of the statement with others that may exist.

³

, which belongs to the contemporary period of Brazilian literature. Such a literary context has, as already mentioned, both in novels and tales, the tendency already trodden by some authors in the 30s, searching for an intimate literature, a psychological, introspective probing.

⁴

⁵

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Aug 2012
• Date of issue
  June 2012

History

• Received
  29 Feb 2012
• Accepted
  11 June 2012