O poder do discurso de submissão: reflexões sobre as práticas discursivas na esfera da administração setecentista

Abstract

This paper presents the use of power in the official discourse produced from 1765 to 1775 when the Morgado de Mateus ruled São Paulo. The studied manuscripts were written in the São Paulo captaincy and sent to Portugal, mainly to the Marquis of Pombal. Looking at the ways in which the power is “exercised, manifested, described, disguised, or legitimized” (Dijk, 2012, p.39) in the discourses of the eighteenth century, we notice that beyond the proposal of communicating the colonial occurrences, they also contain the care with the maintenance of the author’s ethos, which legitimized the power of the European authorities in the colonial Brazil. Among the characteristics of the discourse, the idea of “vassalage” as a practice of relegation of the author’s own image to his hierarchically superior interlocutors. Although paradoxically, this resource made it possible to elevate the esteem of the ethos of the subject in his social environment. Based on the Appraisal System, it is possible to learn about the ideology that motivated the subjection practice as a guarantee of the social prestige. Therefore, it is intended to verify how the intersubjectivity was constructed in the official correspondences of the colonial administration.