THE THEORETICAL APPROACH TO THE “NOTION”: A DESCRIPTION AND REFLECTION

Abstract

Based on the Theory of Predicative and Enunciative Operations (TOPE), developed by the French linguist Antoine Culioli (1990, 1999b), and on studies by his followers, such as Rezende (2000), Romero (2000), Pria (2009), and Franckel (2011), we aim to explain how the concept of notion is mobilized in four studies that examine, within a singular enunciative context, the construction of meaning of the linguistic units FACA (Francisconi, 2021), FALSO (Pria, 2018), RUIM (Lima, 2019), and LEGAL (Pereira Lima, 2019). The concept of notion in TOPE is a fundamental aspect for understanding processes of signification and meaning construction in language. In order to understand the theoretical approach to our object of study—the notion—we draw on research based on Culioli’s theory to reflect on how Brazilian researchers mobilize this concept. Therefore, the methodology adopted is bibliographic, and at no point do we carry out analyses of linguistic units.The results of our research point to what is similar, different, and recurrent in the way the authors work with the notion to construct the referential values of the linguistic units FACA, FALSO, RUIM, and LEGAL in Brazilian Portuguese.