Traduzindo o economês: metáforas da inflação em textos de jornalismo econômico

Abstract

The research aimed two objectives: 1st) identifying and describing the metaphors of the inflation, in a corpus of 18 texts of economic journalism, from Joelmir Beting, written in the last trimester of 2002, at the moment of the government s transition of president Fernando Henrique Cardoso to Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva. 2nd) verifying the recognition of the metaphors by the students of the basic education of a private school from Natal. 91 metaphors had been identified, analyzed in the perspective of the conceptual metaphor s theory, by Lakoff and Johnson (2002), on the basis of the distinction between conceptual metaphor and metaphoric expressions, and between domain-source/domain-target. 10 underlying conceptual metaphors had been inferred, being that the domains-source used more frequently to characterize the inflation had been those ones according to the human being and the animals and, of a less imaginable form, to the ways of transport (car, aircraft). These general conceptual metaphors had been unfolded in other s more specific ones ( animal specifying itself in lion , dragon , dog , etc.). Another result was the identification of metaphoric expressions with two or more meanings , with relation to more than one conceptual metaphor or explicit, in the same expression, two domains-source (for example: armored dragon ) and contributes, of a relevant form, for the semantic struturation of the text. The understanding of the metaphors was verified through an activity of domains-source s identification (10 metaphoric statements and fulfilling of the gap in the phrase the inflation is a/an ) applied in a group of 8th year of the basic education (12-13 years old, with 14 girls and 17 boys) from a school of good social and economic positions from Natal-RN. There weren t great difficulties on the part of the students in recognizing the domains-source involved: about 80% to the great majority of the statements