Protagonist language: texts as agents

ABSTRACT This paper proposes to discuss a social view of language in relation to the contemporary world, introducing the notion of protagonist language and text. Language and texts have an agentive force that acts through social agents. Protagonist texts present four characteristics: power to produce meanings and activate memories; portability in time, space and context; durability; and causal effects, drawing attention to aspects of the social world and constructing identities. We discuss the relation between language and society, examining epistemological changes over the last fifty years. The relation between language ideologies and discourse change is an assumption for the analysis of two texts about school occupation in Brazil, in a macro context of a neoliberal capitalist society.

摘要
本文旨在探讨与当代世界相关的语言社会观，并引入主角式语言与文本（protagonist language and text）这一概念。语言与文本具备通过社会行动者（social agents）发挥作用的施事性力量。主角式文本具有四大特征：可生成意义、激活记忆；可跨时间、空间与语境流转；具备持久性；且具有因果效应，能够引发对社会世界诸多面向的关注并构建身份认同。本文围绕语言与社会的关联展开讨论，梳理近五十年来的认识论变迁。语言意识形态与话语变革之间的关联，是在新自由主义资本主义社会的宏观语境下，分析两篇关于巴西校园占领运动文本的预设前提。