Linguística textual coseriana: orientações para a tarefa de interpretar o sentido dos textos

Abstract

This paper adopts a specific approach to text studies: a coserian textual linguistics. According to Eugenio Coseriu, language has three levels: 1) the universal level, 2) the historical level, and 3) the individual level. According to the author, text linguistics is situated at the individual level of language, its object of study is the text (understood as the linguistic act of a speaker in a given situation) and its central task is to explain the process of interpreting the meaning of texts. Although he establishes the basic concepts that guide and delimit the study of the text, the author recognizes that his linguistics of the text is in its draft stage, for, although it contains the main foundations of the theme, it still lacks proposals for expansion and deepening. From our point of view, for such a development to be achieved, one of the points to be considered rests on the investigation of the relationship between the surroundings and the textual procedures with regard to the explanation of the heuristic analysis of meaning. It is based on the indications left by Coseriu (2007) that we forward this work, whose guiding question asks: how can Coserian theoretical constructs be mobilized in favor of the task of interpretation of the meaning of texts? Our central objective is, therefore, to present a proposal capable of demonstrating, in a systematized way, how Coserian theoretical constructs can be mobilized in favor of the task of interpreting the meaning of texts. As a result of this main goal, our specific objectives are: to unravel the epistemological relations that unite the theory of environments and textual procedures, to explain how each element of the theoretical framework of the individual level of language acts in favor of the construction of meaning in texts, to present a framework that brings together guidelines capable of guiding the task of the hermeneutics of meaning, and to demonstrate the empirical reach of this device based on a sample of concrete texts. For this, we revisit the theory of environments, which are defined as the circumstances of speech that guide the whole discourse and give it meaning, and can even determine the level of truth of the utterances (COSERIU, 1979, p. 228). 228) and we explain the nature of their link with the individual level of language; we point out why contexts and textual procedures act in a constitutive and collaborative way in the construction of the meaning of texts; we systematize the analytical procedure of meaning, namely: meaning is objectified by textual procedures and circumstantiated by environment; we present a guideline plan, from an operational point of view, how the theoretical constructs of the coserian LT can be mobilized in favor of an analytical heuristic of the meaning of texts and we exemplify the applicability of this plan through a sample consisting of a prose text, a verse text and a multimodal text. We consider that our proposal can be used as an effective tool in terms of empirical investigation of the hermeneutics of the meaning of texts and, in this way, we believe that it can contribute, to some extent, to the task of transmitting, systematizing and extending the work of Eugenio Coseriu.