Aos meus amigos desconhecidos: análise dialógica de uma carta enviada pelo Piloto Mor do Liefde William Adams

Abstract

This work is a qualitative bibliographical research of the letter entitled To my unknown friends and countrymen: desiring this letter by your good means, or the news or copy of this letter, may come into the hands of one, or many of my acquaintance in Limehouse or elsewhere, in Kent in Gillingham, by Rochester. For this work the letter is considered travel writing, a textual genre that this work understands to be characterized by non-fiction narratives that report a journey, or journeys that the reader assumes to have occurred in reality (Borm, 1988). Based on the dialogic analysis of discourse, and supported by the conception of language, construction and production of meanings supported by discursive relations undertaken by historically situated subjects (Brait, 2006), the objective of this work is to understand to what extent the language used in the letter allows us to understand the biases present in the discourse created by the author, aiming to perceive how the context of his life, and consequently his culture, influenced the construction of his discourse; in addition considering how the language used in his letter, combined with these biases, is used to achieve his objectives. Observing that, much more than a letter to his family, his writings aimed to form a network of commercial relations between England and Japan, with William Adams himself as the mediator. His interpretation of the world influences the reader to the extent that his text managed to create a new version of the Japanese archipelago and its government, as well as to structure an ideal image of himself, which served as a means of showing his qualifications to those who did not know him yet.