A Pragmatics of linguistic-discursive violence

when can speech harm?

Abstract

Indigenous reality in Brazil reveals forms of violence that affect ways of life, restrict territorial relationships, and promote erasure, hindering the recognition of Indigenous peoples as subjects within a colonial context. Speech acts function as mechanisms of dispossession, marginalizing populations and framing their lives as ungrievable (Butler, 2021a) through their social action (Austin, 1990). This study examines Tekoa Ka’aguy Ovy Porã (Aldeia Mata Verde Bonita), located in Maricá, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The corpus comprises comments responding to a post on the Lei Seca Maricá (LSM) Facebook page. It aims to identify speech acts that enact hate discourse and linguistic-discursive violence, examining their illocutionary force and social effects on Indigenous subjects. The research adopts a qualitative-interpretivist approach and netnographic procedures. Findings indicate that these acts reactualize colonial ideals through condensed historicity (Butler, 2021b), fixing identities through stigmatizing conceptions (Goffman, 2019). They reinstate ritualized forms of expression that produce perlocutionary effects of delegitimization and exclusion, establishing frames that facilitate the dispossession of local Indigenous peoples and reiterate unequal power relations that shape the recognition of their existence and territorial rights.