THE TEXTUAL GENRE OF SONG AND THE SEMIOLINGUISTICS OF DISCOURSE: IMAGINARIES OF RESISTANCE AND PASSIVITY IN "CAROLINA" (1967)

Abstract

The Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985) was marked by systematic repression that imposed aesthetic and political challenges on national artistic production. This article analyzes the lyrics of the song "Carolina" (1967), by Chico Buarque de Holanda, aiming to identify how linguistic-discursive strategies construct imaginaries of resistance and passivity. The theoretical framework is grounded in Patrick Charaudeau's Semiolinguistic Theory, integrated with the discursive genre concepts of Bakhtin and Marcuschi, and the semantic-stylistic perspective of Valente. Methodologically, a qualitative analysis is conducted based on discursivization operations (identification, qualification, action, and causation) and the narrative staging device. The results reveal that the character Carolina transcends nostalgic lyricism to act as a metaphor for the inertia and omission of Brazilian society regarding the authoritarian regime, while the narrator personifies the longing for redemocratization. It concludes that the text employs implicit meaning and the communication contract to bypass censorship, consolidating a socio-discursive imaginary of melancholy linked to the socio-political confinement of the period.