O discurso de Getúlio Vargas e políticas de língua: movimento da memória no imaginário de nacionalidade

Abstract

The present study approaches the imaginary of nationality in Getulio Vargas’ inauguration speech in the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) in 1943, from the reflection on how memory is updated and works regarding the policies of silencing and interdiction of foreign languages enacted by Decree-Laws numbers 406/1938 and 1545/1939, referring to the Estado Novo (New State) period. For this purpose, the perspective of the Discourse Analysis is used, based on authors such as Eni P. Orlandi, from where the theorization of concepts such as imaginary language and the fluidity of language, language policies and discursive memory is possible. The analysis was carried out based on fragments of the opening speech organized into three themes that were recurrent in the text: Vargas’ imaginary about the ABL and its occupants, the immigrants and the nation and nationality. From these fragments, it is possible to ponder about the ways of renewing the discourse from the movements of paraphrase and polysemy, in order to observe the incidence of either repetition or displacement processes. The findings reveal that, although the inauguration speech was delivered on the occasion of the assumption of the chair of immortal of the ABL years after the publication of the Decrees, Vargas does not distance himself from the subject-position of President of the Republic, which makes the speech loaded with meanings that paraphrase the same meaning attributed to nationality through the language policies that were ongoing and enforced by the Law at the time. This fact reinforces the idea of a national language as a principle and means of building the identity of the nation, in which the imaginary is defined by the idea of unity, both a people and a language, through which subjects identify and reaffirm their belonging to the country. With the current study, we hope to contribute to the field of Discourse Analysis, especially regarding the studies on Language Policies, given the thought on the construction of the imaginary of nationality proposed by political-linguistic devices that the National State uses to constitute the idea of nation as territory of a single, sovereign and emancipated language.