As estratégias de veridicção em a Sangue Frio, de Truman Capote: o romance como literatura jornalística

Abstract

The literary journalism or new journalism has as purpose to broaden the everyday journalism social function of providing information and guiding because it defends the practice of the large report which is expressed by the literary nonfiction. There are several books that are classified as literary nonfiction, for example, Olga, by Fernando Morais, Autópsia do Medo: vida e morte do delegado Sérgio Paranhos Fleury, by Percival de Souza, Estação Carandiru, by Drauzio Varella, Hiroshima, by John Hersey and A sangue frio by Truman Capote which is the corpus of our Master’s Degree research. A sangue frio is classified as a literary nonfiction, a “literary classic journalism work” as well as a “nonfiction novel” by its own author and it was this term that motivated us to develop this study. The book tells us about the story of the Clutter family’s death, a brutal murder that occurred in 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas. Capote came up to the two criminals and was trusted by them. Based on their statements and on the investigations, he reconstituted the crime and the murderers’ route. The author took advantages it was a real fact, and used the journalism investigation techniques to write the book so he classifies it as a “nonfiction novel”. This work intends to show that A sangue frio is set as a novel and not as a report or a journalistic text. However, the linguistic strategies, used by Capote, intend to convince and make the reader to believe in what he/she is reading. The research investigates, through Greimas’ semiotic theory, how the narrator, using certain linguistic strategies, produces this effect of veridiction, which makes the text as a journalistic literature. The study also aims to show what and how narrative and speech strategies used by the enunciator make simulacra of a real story for the reader. He used different linguistic strategies (“debreagem”, figurativeness, referring, ways of life, passions) which give the effect of veridiction to the text, to create the novel and the illusion of reality, “a true feedback”. From our analysis, we can show that these literature veridiction strategies together with the journalism investigating techniques (interviews, facts examination, investigation) used by Capote, make A sangue frio a journalistic literature. And for joining the journalism techniques and the literature in a so nicely way, Capote is able to make the person who reads his work, see a text which effect of real makes him/her to believe in the veracity of the narrated story.