Rita and Angelica: Chico Buarque’s women between two social-discursive imaginaries of Brazil

Abstract

This paper intends to catch, based on the assumptions of semiolinguistics Discourse Theory developed by Patrick Charaudeau, different social-discursive imagery in two song lyrics written and recorded by Chico Buarque between the 1960s and 1970s, Rita (1965) and Angelica (1970). In this research, the corpus was selected with focus on songs whose titles are women’s names. We believe that in the six examined buarquean songs - circumscribed to the feminine theme - are stamped strategies and linguistic maneuvers that link to a broader discourse of struggle against censorship in the period between the 60s and the 70s. Therefore, we propose in this research a reflection on the songs by Chico Buarque, in both micro and macro-structural dimensions, in order to uncover the social-discursive imagery designed from female images toward images of the Brazilian nation. In this investigation, what was considered in the corpus was the songs contextual and formal aspects, the language discursivization process, and the narrative scenario’s organization. The main results of this research indicated that in Rita, the woman was spotted as representing a dictatorial Brazil, and in Angelica, as a militant Brazil. The utterances produced in the corpus of the songs create between them an intertextual network which regroup to speak of a multifaceted Brazil constituting, in a broad sense, the social-discursive imaginary of resistance and militancy.

Keywords: buarqueanas songs, semiolinguistics, social-discursive imaginary.