Passions in the Journalistic Discourse: from Confidence to Disappointment in a Political Column

Abstract

This work deals with the role played by the passions related to the confidence and the disappointment in the intersubjective relationships between enunciator and enunciatee, considering the system of values that permeates the construction of the discourse. Thus, based on greimassian semiotics and French Discourse Analysis, we present an analysis of a political column published by Folha de São Paulo newspaper before 2006’s brazilian election second round. Considering the constraints of the genre of discourse and the strategy of identification between the journalist and the reader, we describe and analyze the passionate narrative path and the modal configurations of the passions experienced by the subjects of enunciation. We examined, then, some elements of narrative and discoursive levels of meaning generative process. The analysis of the narrative level shows that hope is the first passion in this passionate narrative itinerary. It also shows that the way as the fiduciary contract is broken creates the passionate meaning effects of disappointment, grief, insecurity, which lead to passion of lack. The analysis of the discoursive level reveals, in turn, that this passion of lack does not correspond to vengeance, but to justice, a dispassionate passion. The discourse creates a passionate effect consistent with the meaning effects of objectivity and detachment.