The ‘Brazilian jeitinho’ from a cognitive-interactional perspective

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22481/el.v18i2.6287

Keywords:

Cultural linguistics; Cultural conceptualizations; Cultural metaphors; ‘Brazilian jeitinho’; Gestural metaphor.

Abstract

According to cultural linguistics, world experiences and interpretations of different speech communities should be conceived dynamically regarding cultural conceptualizations. ‘Brazilian jeitinho’ is generally seen as a creative strategy applied in emergent situations and oscillates between favor and corruption. The article aims to realize a microanalysis of an elicited conversation between four professors at the UFMG (two of them are Brazilian and two originally German). The objective is to reveal how the concept ‘Brazilian jeitinho’ is co-constructed multimodally through conceptual metaphor on the linguistic level and how metaphoric gestures, as well as prosodic cues are present in this interactional process. We found seven cultural metaphors which revealed that the interlocutors co-constructed the concept in question (a) in a multimodal way, (b) primarily through basic image schemas and by means of conceptual metaphors. Additionally, the incorporation of prosodic and gestural metaphors was more highlighted in the case of the two Brazilian participants.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Ulrike Agathe Schroder, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG/Brazil)

Ulrike Agathe Schröder is a doctor and Associate Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Linguistic Studies, at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She is a Free Lecturer at the University of Essen, Germany in 2012. She is the coordinator of the International Research Center of Intercultural Communication in Multimodal Interactions - ICMI and develops research especially in the area of Cognitive and Interactional Linguistics.

Ruan de Castro Silva, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG/Brazil)

Ruan de Castro Silva has a degree in Letters, a degree in Portuguese, at the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).

References

BARBOSA, L. O jeitinho brasileiro. A arte de ser mais igual do que os outros. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier; Editora Campus, 2006.
BÜHLER, K. Sprachtheorie: die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Stuttgart: Fischer, 1982. Edição original: 1934.
CIENKI, A. Why study metaphor and gesture? In: _____; MÜLLER, C. (Org.). Metaphor and Gesture. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008. p. 5-25.
CIENKI, A.; MÜLLER, C. Metaphor, Gesture, and Thought. In: GIBBS, R. W. Jr. (Org.). The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 483-501.
COSTA, S. O Brasil de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. Revista Sociedade e Estado, n. 29(3), p. 823-839, 2014.
DAMATTA, R. O que faz o brasil, Brasil? Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1986.
FERREIRA, M. C. et al. Unraveling the mystery of Brazilian Jeitinho: a cultural exploration of social norms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, n. 38(3), p. 331-344, 2012.
FILLMORE, C. Topics in Lexical Semantics. In: COLE, R. W. (Org.). Current Issues in Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975. p. 76-138.
GRADY, J. E. Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. Berkeley: Doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley, 1997.
GRADY, J. E. Primary metaphors as inputs to conceptual integration. Journal of Pragmatics, n. 37, p. 1595–1614, 2005.
HOLANDA, S. B. Raízes do Brasil. Companhia das Letras, 1995. Edição original: 1936.
KÖVCSES, Z. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
LAKOFF, G. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
LAKOFF, G.; JOHNSON, M. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Edição original: 1980.
LAKOFF, G.; JOHNSON, M. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
MÜLLER, C. Gestures as a medium of expression: The linguistic potential of gestures. In: MÜLLER, C. et al. (Org.). Body – Language – Communication. An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. Volume 1. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013. p. 202-217.
MÜLLER, C.; LADEWIG, S. H.; BRESSEM, J. Gestures and speech from a linguistic perspective: A new field and its history. In: MÜLLER, C. et al. (Org.). Body – Language – Communication. An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. Volume 1. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013. p. 55-81.
PALMER, G. B. Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
PERLMAN, M.; GIBBS, R. W. Jr. Sensorimotor simulation in speaking, gesturing, and understanding. In: MÜLLER, C. et al. (Org.). Body – Language – Communication. An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. Volume 1. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013. p. 512-533.
SCHMIDT, T.; WÖRNER, K. EXMARaLDA – Creating, analysing and sharing spoken language corpora for pragmatic research. Pragmatics, n. 19, p. 565-582, 2009.
SCHRÖDER, U. Kommunikationstheoretische Fragestellungen in der kognitiven Metaphernforschung. Eine Betrachtung von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2012.
SELTING, M. et al. Um sistema para transcrever a fala-em-interação: GAT 2. Traduzido e adaptado por Ulrike Schröder et al. Veredas, v. 20, n. 2, p. 6-61, 2016.
SHARIFIAN, F. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical framework and applications. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2011.
SHARIFIAN, F. Cultural Linguistics. In: SHARIFIAN, F. (Org.). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. London, New York: Routledge, 2015. p. 473-492.
SHARIFIAN, F. Cultural Linguistics. The State of the Art. In: SHARIFIAN, F. (Org.). Advances in Cultural Linguistics. Singapore: Springer, 2017. p. 1-28.

Downloads

Published

2020-08-03

How to Cite

SCHRODER, U. A.; SILVA, R. de C. The ‘Brazilian jeitinho’ from a cognitive-interactional perspective. Language Studies, [S. l.], v. 18, n. 2, p. 117-134, 2020. DOI: 10.22481/el.v18i2.6287. Disponível em: https://periodicos2.uesb.br/index.php/estudosdalinguagem/article/view/6287. Acesso em: 22 nov. 2024.

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2020): Estudos da Língua(gem) - ISSN: 1982-0534

Section

Papers

License

Creative Commons License
Estudos da Língua(gem) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish in the journal Estudos da Língua (gem) agree with the following terms:
The journal Estudos de Língua(gem) maintains the copyrights of the contributions published. These rights include the publication of the contribution and make its content available for free through the portal.