Modelos cognitivos na categorização de "violência" : estruturas e processos no discurso de sujeitos urbanos, rurais e "rurbanos"

Abstract

The guiding problem of this dissertation is: how do urban, rural and rurban individuals of the region of Caxias do Sul structure the category VIOLENCE, on the basis of cognitive models, which emerge from the way these individuals express linguistically their experiences in this domain? The general objective is to investigate, in the field of Cognitive Linguistics (CL), Cognitive Semantics more specifically, which processes and structures are implied in the categorization of VIOLENCE from the analysis of parts of interviews carried out with urban, rural and rurban individuals of the region of Caxias do Sul. The sample is constituted by 20 interviews, which generates a corpus for analysis. The analyses are founded on the Theory of Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMT) and its theoretical consequences, with emphasis on metaphorical and metonymical models. This investigation is particularly relevant since VIOLENCE is a complex abstract concept, whose structuring is strongly connected to cognitive and sociocultural factors. The general objective is opened up in the following specific objectives: (a) to identify and analyze the structure of the category VIOLENCE in terms of metaphorical and metonymical mappings; and (b) to discuss methodological issues concerning the interview, thus evaluating its adequacy as a survey instrument in CL. Hypotheses formulated on the basis of the survey problem are: (1) metaphorical models structuring the category differ in urban, rural and rurban subjects; (2) metonymical models, which are culturally motivated, differ among urban, rural and rurban subjects; (3) the individual interview, as initially proposed, constitutes a legitimate speech act for analysis in CL as long as a set of technical-procedural requirements is met. After analyzing the corpus, it has been noticed that hypotheses (1) and (2) are not confirmed completely because, although the sample presents rich metaphorical and metonymical mappings, these do not differ due to the criterion of belonging to a certain community but rather due to schooling. However, the verification of these hypotheses should deserve further attention in later surveys, and with a larger sample size. Hypothesis (3) was confirmed, once the discourses generated in this type of speech event supplied highly relevant data to investigate the structuring of the category VIOLENCE, which can be still explored in new surveys focusing on more specific aspects of certain linguistic manifestations.