A metáfora e a retórica do medo nas letras de músicas de Raul Seixas: um drible à censura

Abstract

.In this thesis, we analyze the metaphors and the passion of fear in Raul Seixas’s lyrics during the dictatorship period. Our corpus was composed of eight lyrics: “Conserve o seu Medo” (1979), “Metrô Linha 743” (1984), “Mosca na Sopa” (1973), “Novo Aeon” (1975); “Carimbador Maluco” (1983), “Paranóia” (1975), “Rockixe” (1973) and “Sociedade Alternativa” (1974). They all share a common theme “deflecting censorship”. One of the reasons for choosing this singer’s lyrics is his importance in the Brazilian musical scenery. In addition, we admire his creativity as we observe there are not only several themes in his songs, such as politics, religion, esoterism, but also different languages, such as the metaphorical and the philosophical ones. Our research had the objective of showing how metaphors and metaphorical expressions were used as argumentative language resource and persuasion strategies to deflect censorship. We also noted that fear and other related passions, for instance, despise, confidence, wrath and indignation, are displayed by the lyric poet in Raul Seixas’s songs. As regards our theoretical fundamentals, we follow Reboul’s (2004) and Tringali’s (1988) concepts to analyze the metaphors and Aristotles’ (2003) principles to study the passions. The research also aimed at characterizing the genre “lyrics”, based on Bronckart’s (1999) and Carmelino’s (2006, 2007) theoretical concepts considering theme content, production context and the text infrastructure. As an analysis procedure, we also discussed the social-historical context of the time when these lyrics were written, according to Fausto’s (2002) and Vieira’s (1985) concepts. Furthermore, we draw some considerations on the singer’s life, following Passos (2003) and Boscato (2006), so that the reader could use this kind of information to have a better understanding of the analysis of the lyrics. After the analysis, we realized that the singer used these songs to deflect the censorship, since music was one of the few means of communication allowed in the country then. He had also tried to persuade his interlocutors to fight against the impositions of the dictatorial government. Moreover, we verified that the metaphors, the passions and the genre can be observed in certain textual signs which allow us to make the necessary inferences to construct meaning in Raul Seixas’s lyrics. Keywords: Rhetoric; genre; metaphor; fear; lyrics.