Point of view and engagement: analyzing the (re)construction of meanings in a journalistic column

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how the dialogic mechanism of point of view (Rabatel, 2016), understood within the assumptions of Textual Linguistics (TL), relates to the engagement subsystem, an analytical category of discursive positioning in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and how both contribute to the analysis of coherence construction. The research is grounded in enunciative and interactional reflections on Rabatel’s notion of point of view (PDV), which emphasizes discursive polyphony as an analytical tool for understanding the complexity of texts and discourses, recognizing the presence of multiple voices and the sociocultural context in which they are embedded. It also draws on the engagement subsystem, which describes the dialogic positions assumed by writers/speakers (Martin; White, 2005). To this end, we analyze a journalistic column by José Simão, published in Folha de S. Paulo. The results indicate that the integration between PDV and engagement constitutes an effective analytical instrument for understanding the mechanisms through which the columnist manages political critique. We expect that the reflections developed in this study may support analyses of polyphony management and its influence on text interpretation, considering not only the organization of ideas, but, above all, how discursive positions are delimited in opposition to one another, converging or diverging (Cavalcante et al., 2022).