In general, the statements they can be considered as discursive events, that is, they are the communication/interaction units between the subjects.
So that we can reflect on the statement, it is necessary, first, to discuss about the Enunciation Linguistics, an area of philosophy of language that deals with the study of utterances, discourses and their conditions of production. This area of language studies gained prominence with the publication of the work Marxism and Philosophy of Language(1929), when Mikhail Bakhtin laid the foundations for a new theoretical-methodological framework for the analysis of language phenomena, whose object is enunciation, that is, verbal interaction.
What does Bakhtin say about the Statement?
In his works, Bakhtin raises the relevance of considering the work with language from the real conditions of use, and not from the classification and analysis of fixed and classificatory categories of words and the functioning of languages. This is because, for the Russian philosopher, every statement has a fundamentally dialogic character, that is, the statements generate meaning effects that they can only be analyzed in the context of enunciation and are always related to other previous utterances and to those that are yet to come.
So that we can understand what Bakhtin postulates, he read the following statement:
I loved the sleeve.
In order to understand the meaning effects produced by this statement, it is necessary to consider its production conditions. This means that, in order for us to understand the meaning of this statement, it is not enough to analyze it morphologically or syntactically, but rather under what conditions it was produced. Without analyzing the conditions of production of the utterance, we cannot know whether the noun 'manga' refers to a fruit or a part of a blouse. These production conditions would be, for example, the external factors that make up the statements: if the subject speaks pointing or holding the fruit, pointing to the interlocutor's blouse, if you are at the fair buying fruit, if you are in a store looking at clothes etc.
With respect to fundamentally dialogic character of the utterance, as Bakhtin points out, we can say that this statement was not uttered for the first time by the speaker. It was necessary that other utterances had appeared previously for both the utterer and his interlocutor understood the meaning of the words "I loved the sleeve" (what is to adore, what is a mango).
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In the same way that other previous utterances are necessary for us to understand the meaning effects, every utterance is also related to others that are yet to come, since the utterances require a response, an active responsive attitude from the interlocutor during the interaction between the subjects.
It is in the utterance that the most varied forms of linguistic expressiveness are found, with these forms of expression in a state of incomplete or unfinished, ready to respond to utterances already uttered or to those that will still be carried out, that is, they are in function of the forms of utterances, carried out in moments of interaction.
In order to analyze a utterance, it is necessary to observe it from its dialogical relationship, that is, how each utterance is a link in the chain of other utterances. This current can only be seen in its performance and linguistic materialization, such as verbal, oral or written texts. This means that we find in the texts (verbal or not) an example of a concrete statement. The utterance and the text are understood as being a single concrete phenomenon, as units of verbal exchange.
language and utterance
For Bakhtin, subjects place themselves in the world in and through languages, verbal and/or not, and conceive language as a social phenomenon that manifests itself in verbal interaction. It is precisely for this reason that he considers it necessary to observe, in addition to the structure of utterances, the extralinguistic aspects that constitute them, that is, the conditions of production. These aspects are essential for the production of meanings, which are in tune with the reality of the interactional event. Thus, the implementation of the word occurs in the flow of verbal interaction, being (re)signified from the context in which it emerges, at the moment of enunciation.
prayer and word
Bakhtin, in his work Marxism and Philosophy of Language (1929), sought to delimit the boundaries that distinguish the utterance from the terms prayer and word. THE prayer it is considered a unit of the language of passive construction and analysis, since, as a unit, it does not relativize the other (the interlocutor of the discourse) and the specificity of the context. THE word is defined as a phenomenon or ideological sign par excellence, the product of social exchanges, in a given context, which determines the living conditions of a given linguistic community (religion, party politics, institutions of work etc.).
By Ma. Luciana Kuchenbecker Araújo
