The discursive representation for black women in stories from the book Olhos d’água by Conceição Evaristo

a systemic-functional analysis

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the discursive representations for black women in stories from the book Olhos d'água by Conceição Evaristo based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Systemic-Functional Grammar by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), paying particular attention to the discursive representation within the Transitivity system. For qualitative data analysis, we divided the research into two stages: contextual analysis, in which we verified the field, tenor and mode; and linguistic analysis, in which we investigated representations for black women considering the Transitivity system, the Modalization system and the Thematic Structure. The research results reveal that material and mental processes instantiate meanings linked to black women's actions and their feelings and thoughts. As for modalization, propositions, in general, are marked by a high degree of probability, with the narrator as the source of explicit subjective evaluation. Regarding the Theme-Rheme articulation, the simple unmarked Theme constitutes the starting point for the interpretation of the discursive representations of black women as “strong”, “wise”, “ancestral”, “good”, but also as a woman “stigmatized”, “violated” and “marginalized” by the system.