Misunderstandings and Contradictions in Discursive Argumentation: silence emergence production processes in cases of Brazilian digital media

In language, there are a few cases of exposition of arguments that, in spite of all the effort the subjects do in their enunciative constructs, misunderstandings and contradictions seem to return in these arguments, which may generate some disagreement. These flaws in argumentation can and must be explained by several theories within the scope of language studies: from the most structural, through the enunciative theories, to the most discursive. In this sense, we propose in this paper to search, in a discursive understanding of language, namely, from French Discourse Analysis, and more specifically that of the discursive theory of constitutive silence to every language process, proposed by Eni Orlandi (2007), the analyzes for these ritual failures in the elaboration of the arguments. To do so, we have brought the analysis of some cases that have occurred in what we call the digital media of Brazilian daily life, that is, cases that circulated in the virtual spaces of the Internet and its various enunciative devices. In these case analysis, we seek, through the formula of constitutive and foundational silence, described by Orlandi (2007), to understand how misunderstandings and contradictions are, in fact, the evidence and irruption of these discursive silencings in the discursive arguments of the cases. Thus, responding to this hypothesis is our main objective in this work.


Misunderstandings and Contr
The man in silence is the man without meaning" (ORLANDI, 2007, p. 34) Thus, the objective of this article is to bring some cases of arguments used by different characters of public life, which were used in discourses of the exhibition in a here called Brazilian daily digital media. More specifically, we seek the analysis of cases in which the argumentation, in a communicative interaction, seems to expose species of misconceptions and/or contradictions, not necessarily purposive, of the arguers, but which present in these equivocal significant elements of historical order, in which the subjects show his/her face, that is, from what ideological place they produce senses.
In this way, this lack of argumentative ritual often upsets questions that derive from social history, in the most different conjunctures and material conditions of production of the facts, opening the possibility of observations of a series of contradictions that, here, we try to tie to the theory of the forms of silence.
Theoretically, we will associate ourselves with Pêcheux-based discourse theories, more closely with a Brazilian theory that also derives from these basis: the Eni Orlandi's theory of silence (2007).

A BRIEF THEORETICAL EXPOSITION: OTHER POSSIBLE SILENCES IN THE HUMANITIES
When the silence object is thought of as the process of the constitution of discourses, especially in the human sciences, we do not have only the discursive conception of this object. In a very quick description, we could say of different theories that seek comprehension about the object silence. There seems to be "almost always" a double instance for theories of silence. Thus, there are silence and religion: speaking/not speaking the word of God. Who has the right to speak or does not have the right to speak. Silence in literature: the creation of lack and excess of saying. Still, silence and Psychoanalysis: lack and emptiness. The word not spoken, of keeping quiet, of silencing or being silenced, and a founding, structuring, of the hole of the meaning, to be in restricted examples.
However, from the perspective of the Brazilian theorist Eni Orlandi, one can perceive, in a discursive manner, the contradictory movements between subject and meaning (ORLANDI, 2007, p. 17). The mistakes, the failures and the effects of sense of the relation with interdiscourse, that is, always the search for the understanding of the modes of production of the imaginaries necessary for the production of meaning (ORLANDI, 2007, p.18).

ANOTHER BRIEF THEORETICAL EXPOSITION: THE DISCURSIVE SILENCE OF ORLANDI
In the wake of what has been said in previous lines, what we propose here is the analysis of some forms of argumentative misunderstandings that have occurred in Brazilian daily digital media in the last years, but we will do it from a Brazilian discursive theory.
In light of Baronas's proposal (2015), which seeks to map and present discursive theories peculiarly developed in Brazil, taking into account our corpora and our own understandings of the discursive theoretical-methodological objects, we have a reading about the discursive theory of silence, of Eni Orlandi, a Brazilian teacher and researcher with a long and solid career, especially in the militancy of French-based discursive studies in Brazil.
In this work, Orlandi (2007) brings as theoretical reflection the silent object, within Brazilian discursive studies, as a theoretical-methodological gesture proper to his research. The theory of the Brazilian researcher is not specifically and exclusively the language and the speech, in which one would have silence as a linguistic part in a structural basis, it is not also the competence, from a formalist-cognitivist basis, it is not the interaction, from a more enunciative basis, and it is not exactly the discourse, that is, the discourse itself.
In this perspective, then, Orlandi's theory of silence is based on the bases of: a) thinking silence is an effort against the hegemony of formalism, because in this perspective there is no room for the non logically stable; b) thinking silence is an effort against positivism in the observation of the facts of language; c) when it comes to silence, we do not have formal marks, but tracks, traces, clues; d) thinking silence is problematizing the notions of linearity, literality, completeness, since meaning does not develop on a straight, measurable, quantifiable line; the senses are scattered; e) thinking silence is asking questions about the limits of the dialogue, since the intervention of silence shows the lack of symmetry between the interlocutors; emitter and receiver are just decoders from a common code; the interlocution relationship is not well behaved; f) To think silence is to problematize words like representation, interpretation; and g) thinking silence is drawing a limit to the reduction of meaning to the paradigm of verbal language, because there is no grammar of silence, a syntax of silence.
Therefore, for the Brazilian linguist, silence is something that is fundamental to every process of language and/in senses: "It means that it is the signifying matter for excellence, a significant continuum" (ORLANDI, 2007, p. 29). Instead of thinking of silence as a lack, we think of it as an excess, a unity and a contradiction already present, already there, in the formulations, articulations and processes of discursive interaction through transparent and opaque language.
The apparent discursive unity that the subjects carry out in their enunciations is already the silencing of division and contradiction. Ideology 2 is built precisely in the materiality of language with the materiality of history. The effect of the subject as an interlocutor is built in the process of access to the necessary senses, in the relation between the said and the silenced, which, in turn, seems to be exposed in the evidence by means of misunderstandings that arise in the language interactions (ORLANDI, 2007, p. 20-21).
In this sense, unlike other theories in which one searches for what has been silenced in discourses, such as Ducrot's (1987), with its polyphonic-enunciative theory, posed, presupposed and implied, the implicit statements, in which silence is given as a negative, the silence, being "revealed", exposed, being the symptom, reverses the logic of this theoretical understanding, making silence not a negative but a positive path, since silence, unlike implicit, does not have a relation only with the saying. It exists within the articulation, the formulation of the discursive process itself.
In order to make the above statements somewhat less opaque, let's take the image below, taken from www.notíciasr7.com. Source: Portal R7 Picture 1: Taken from site R7, Record TV Network We will focus more specifically on the statement "Violence against women" [Violência contra a mulher]. Based on the theory of implicit, postulated by Ducrot (1987), in the statement in question, because of an argumentative strategy, the announcer silences to the addressee who the perpetrator of violence is, and also what kind of violence is committed against the woman. It is, therefore, a deliberate silencing.
However, in the discursive approach proposed by Orlandi (2007), the statement in question is the very materialization of the discursive contradiction that the subjects take. That is, it is the enunciative place in which a subject who intends to denounce violence against women contributes inadvertently to the maintenance of this violence, since it takes up interdiscursively a whole set of discourses, historically constructed in our patriarchal society, which authorize the most varied types violence against women.

FOUNDING SILENCE AND SILENCING POLICY
On the one hand, the founding silence is that which exists in words, which means the unspoken and that gives space for significant retreat, producing conditions to signify. Founder not as an original discourse nor as absolute, but as a movement of the senses. That is, the possibility of dealing with the constitutive contradiction of the subjects. The I/ Other with the "one" and the "multiple". Therefore, founder silence as unspoken which is history and which, given the necessary relation of meaning to the imaginary, is also a function of the necessary relation between language and ideology. Silence then works such a need: And when we say founder we are affirming this necessary and proper character. Founder does not mean here "originating" nor the place of absolute meaning. Nor would there be, in silence, an independent, self-sufficient, preexisting sense. It means that silence is the guarantee of the movement of the senses. It is always said from the silence (ORLANDI, 2007, p. 23).
On the other hand, the politics of silence is subdivided into: 1) Constitutive silence, which tells us that to say we must not say (one word necessarily erases other words); 2) Local silence, which refers to censorship properly (to what is prohibited to say in a certain conjuncture).
There is, therefore, an incessant search for speech, for speaking, for confession, and for the excesses of saying, which sometimes expose themselves in contradictions and misunderstandings in linguistic symptoms. "It [silence] is the possibility for the subject to work his constitutional contradiction, that one which situates it in the relationship of the 'one' with the 'multiple', which accepts reduplication and displacement that allow us to see that all discourse always refers to another discourse that gives it meaningful reality" (ORLANDI, 2007, p. 24).
But this silence, in misunderstandings and contradictions, occurs in traces, clues, and symptoms. For this to be interpretable, Orlandi (2007, p. 64) proposes an interesting formula that will serve as a basis for analyzing the data presented here. The formula is: to say X, you must not say Y.

Analysis of Some Cases
Let's look at a first example. Perhaps the wave of strongly conservative and sometimes reactionary and biased debates, which have long been in Brazil, has brought to the bay of public debates discourses that are co-occurring, clearly parts of a constituted controversy 3 .
From these discourses for and/or against themselves, some time ago a controversy appeared, that we remember in this text, between the singer Joelma, of the Brazilian musical band Calypso, and Brazilian writer of soap opera of Globo TV Network, Aguinaldo Silva; such a polemic seems to bring to light the formula of silence.
The singer reportedly told Época magazine: "I've seen a lot of people regenerate themselves, I know a lot of mothers who suffer from having gay children, like a drug addict trying to recover." Aguinaldo Silva blasted her, via Twitter, to allegedly declare that "Joelma sings badly, she dances badly, she swings badly, she dresses badly and when she opens her mouth, just talks bullshit." 4 (DEPOIS DE CRITICAR JOELMA…, 2013).
Then, she said: "If I were homophobic, I would not have gay friends, what they do is their problem, I have nothing to do with it. I did nothing to beat them and I do not have that right. But I am against gay marriage. It would be the same as I would agree that my gay son would marry. When a mother dreams things for her son, she only dreams good things".
From the point of view of the efficient argument, Joelma just ratified his position, which he had previously silenced, denying it as a homophobic discourse. It is explained: she begins her argument with the conditional sentence "if I were homophobic, I would not have friendship with gays." So she tried to get away from the peck of homophobia, which in turn answers her first speech, like the one debated by Aguinaldo Silva.
To this argument she adds other predicates that would make her, in her conception, a non-homophobic person. However, at the end of his defense argument, there is a misunderstanding that indicates what has been silenced in the process of discursive production, which opens a symptomatic expedient for discourses that corroborate the discursive fitting historically already signified in terms of homophobia. And it's not about accepting gay marriage or not, but what comes next: "It would be the same as if I agreed that my gay son would get married. When a mother dreams things for her son, she only dreams good things." From the argumentative point of view, the interdiscursive subject shows his face, since a fault breaks out in the discursive ritual of her defense. If she has no problem with gays, according to her words, why, then, assert that allowing a gay child marriage would be against her maternal feeling of wanting only good things to her child? This last part of Joelma's discourse antagonizes two sets of meanings: I have nothing against homosexuals, I even have gay friends, then I sympathize with them versus I am a mother -and I gather here all the historical positive values in relation to motherhood -and I want only good things to my son, which does not include seeing him marry by the fruit of love in a homoaffective relationship.
Therefore, in this loving-maternal spectrum this is not included, because we observe the presence of the exclusive adverb "alone" mobilize a sense orientation in which the good dreams that a mother thinks for her children can pass through the marital law between homosexuals. There is an incongruity of arguments in the singer's speech. In what she said, his first speech corroborates and is complemented, polemized by the writer of Globo TV Network, that is, a supposedly homophobic discourse.
In other words, when taking into account the theory of silence, to say X, you must not say Y, so Joelma, to say X = "only dreams good things" brings together, in her statement, the excess in silence of what is not to say, not to say Y = "I am not homophobic". However, this Y returns in a misapprehension of the silencer that annuls the supposed argumentative correction of not being considered homophobic, smoothing his argument in hopes of saving himself. In other terms, more linked to Pêcheux, the senses that the announcer pushes out the door: not be homophobic -I have nothing against homosexuals, I even have friends, then I sympathize with them -return with all their force through the window: I only want good things to my son, among them, that he does not marry a gay man. It should be noted that the return of this homophobic interdiscursive subject is not implicit, as we might think from Oswald Ducrot: it is actually linguistically materialized.
Another example that competes for this same understanding comes in an interview granted by the former soccer player and, currently, sports commentator of Fox SportS channels, Edmundo. "The animal", designation that was coined to him, when he was a soccer player. The nickname was given by the sport narrator Osmar Santos. The former athlete from Palmeiras gave an interview to the site UOL, in his section of Sports (UOL ESPORTES, 2016), in which and through which he makes a series of observations about his professional career and his personal life. Among these observations, Edmundo comments on one of his sons, Alexander, a homosexual in his sexual orientation.
Asked about the sexual orientation of Alexander, Edmund approves. "I think it's nice of him to assume it (homosexuality). There are a lot of people who hide things, who make worse things. I have no problem with sexuality. I'm devoid of that kind of thinking." "I had the opportunity to talk to him. I think everyone has the right to have their sexual choice. The one thing I asked for -and I do not even have much right to demand so -is behavior. A behavior of man before society. Man of character. Socially, the principles my father taught me. In that case he scores 10". Edmundo says about Alexander, who lives in São Paulo, where he tries a career as a stylist.
It is observed in Edmund's quotation that there is a certain dissonance between what he presents in his saying, X, which is in a first set of statements, marked in his words, in his most assertive expression of non-prejudice by: "I think nice of him to assume it"; "I have no problem with sexuality, I am devoid of that kind of thinking"; "I think everyone has the right to have their sexual choice"; and what came from a return in the unspoken in Y, in a second set of statements given in: "The only thing I asked for -and I do not even have much right to charge -is behavior"; "A man's behavior towards society. Man of character"; "Socially, the principles that my father taught me. In that case he scores 10".
Thus observed, the interviewee demonstrates a flaw between what he conjures up in his assertion about sexuality and what discursively joins the other enunciative point, that is, the complement of his social, historical and cultural understanding of what a homosexual is for society. When we look at the whole of his discursive enunciation, we find that Edmund's discourse contains a strong contradiction, a dissonance between what his words seem to say and what his condition of historical subject seems to say.
The first set of statements opposes the second set, since it is asserted in the first that the subject can assume (and Edmond finds a positive attitude, through the jargon connoted by the word cool, something positive "I think nice"), that Edmund's subject is in the historical position of those who do not have problems with sexuality, therefore ideological prejudices could not or should not be manifested, or even of the right of any subject to opt for anything in society "He has the right to have," one of the supposed juridical pillars of society of capitalist mode of production, symbolic and material, and of the bourgeois subject emerged from the same mode of production, is strongly dissociated from the enunciative meanings of a second set of statements and, still more, of their effects of sense, because requiring certain behavior is, in many measures, to charge one norm, excluding others.
In this sense, the subject, then, can be free to manifest, as long as in a given spectrum of behavior. The subject can manifest himself but must maintain "a behavior of man before society. Maintaining a behavior of man is inscribed in a socio-ideological formation and in social positions that are aligned with bundles of meaning understandings and effects of senses attuned to heterosexual behavior, something that for Edmund was no longer in question, since the subject can assume and can be homosexual.
Although there is an attenuation in the modalization of Edmund's discourse, because it associates man with character, there is the contradiction present and manifested in the meanings and effects of meanings also of this statement. As if a character were a value, something solely and exclusively of "men", excluded, therefore, from other sexual orientations, including the homosexual. That is not to mention what it can bring from the meanings of the statement, not analyzed and highlighted here, "There are a lot of people who hide things, who make worse things." 5 Thus, in saying X, broadly speaking, "one has to be a man of character" / "one has to be a man before society", and then one can assume what and how one wishes, Edmund must not say Y: "gay can only be assumed to have the character of man / The concept of man passed to him by the family tradition"; however, Y returns by creating an argumentative flaw in X, mobilizing what has been silenced, but which presents itself in excess in the discursive process of the interview granted through the linguistic symptom that contradicts X. Again, the homophobic interdiscursive subject shows to his face, making explicit his prejudiced position towards homosexuals.
Another case in question, which resembles those already described, is an interview of the politician, professor of law and presidential candidate of Brazil, remaining in third place, in the 2018 election, Ciro Gomes, in an interview with the journalist José Trajano's program, Na sala do Zé (2017). At the interview time 1:17:32, Ciro Gomes begins to talk about fascism and what this intolerant ideology represents for society. I was a governor and they killed ... a group of neo-Nazis killed a Cearense with kicks here. And I even did one thing, I called the guys fagots and of course this reproduces culture, I already learned that, but I did not want to call them homosexuals, I wanted to call it the worst thing I thought back then … It is possible to understand that, in the same line of argument of the previous examples, Ciro Gomes makes a dissonant understanding between what he knows that identifies the homosexuality in our society and the effect of sense to make itself understood about this subject.
The statement "but I did not want to call them homosexuals, I wanted to call it the worst thing I thought of at the time" puts in a symmetrical relation of meaning discursive discourses and understandings that are ideologically asymmetrical, since, as "escaped" as the evidence of meanings to say about the subject, the concept of homosexuals is equal to the worst thing that the subject represented in the enunciator Ciro Gomes thought at the time. The worst thing as a referential paradigm, at the time, was to be a fagot, which is a pejorative designation for subjects with homosexual orientation. So to say X: but I did not want to call them homosexuals, it was necessary to silence discursively "I wanted to call the worst thing I thought at the time, which returns in Y as a symptom of argumentative misconception." Although the adverb "at that time" slightly modify the effect of the predicate "call the worst thing I thought", we also have the homophobic interdiscursive subject returning window inside and establishing his prejudicial enunciative position towards the homosexuals.
In another example to be analyzed, we have a video published on October 30, 2018, shortly after the Brazilian presidential elections, in which Evangelical Pastor Silas Malafaia receives in his preaching, in the Church Assembly of God: victory in Christ, the newly elected president, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. In the video, there is an affective presentation of the first meetings between the two, of the first approximations, indicating, therefore, a relation of proximity between the two evangelicals, and there is also the president's own word to the faithful in a speech divided into three parts, according to the Silas Malafaia's own explanation, in the minute 2:07: Bolsonaro, I will let you say a word, I will say a prayer for you and I will release […], because this is something that God has given to me and I am no better than anyone, but I have a prophetic voice in that nation. I'm going to release a prophetic word about you and your government. Then, with the word, the President of Brazil.
Thus, we will focus on analysis in the last part of Pastor Malafaia's speech, that is, in his prophetic word to the president, which begins in the video at 12th minute of the speech, with an already trembling voice, Pastor Silas Malafaia says: Because the Bible says one thing, Bolsonaro, in First Corinthians, chapter 1, from verse 27: God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. Now the thing is going to be deeper: He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things -and the things that are not -to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him... That's why God chose you.
In analyzing the discursive perspective of silence, in the formula for saying X, one must not say Y, the Pastor's prophetic argument brings some problems, therefore, to elaborate his discourse on the president, prophesying him as leader of the nation, the one who, according to Malafaia, was chosen by the people and also by God, Silas Malafaia produces the enunciation of his discourse, which is anchored in the divine word, citing the word of God, through the Bible, silencing several other discourses that throughout the campaign and in the post-campaign sought to undo this supposed prophetic image of Jair Bolsonaro, thereby trying the believers' understanding that in fact Bolsonaro is a chosen leader who can cross and lead the nation in the face of Brazil's problems.
Putting in another way, to say that the president-elected is the best person the Nation has ever chosen and who will be the best president, Malafaia says X with the word of God, listing the elements that would make Bolsonaro the chosen one, not to say Y, when silenced words would say that it is part of the same schemes, of the same problems of the so-called traditional politics, of the governments, especially and almost exclusively PT(Partido dos Trabalhadores/Workers Party), in the Pastor's view, who have brought so much suffering to the country and will not be a good president. However, X is a biblical discourse in which it says that God's choice through the people was for " […] foolish things of the world to shame the wise, God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." Now the thing is going to be deeper: God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things." That is, not to say Y, silenced in relation to other practices and other discourses, Malafaia states that the president is the vile, crazy, despicable choice, and still confirms it at the end: "That is why God chose you".
From the point of view of the discursive, prophetic and supposedly complimentary argumentation, silence, in the pastor's discourse, emerges as precisely the negation of Bolsonaro's virtues. In the video discourse, the choice was made by someone vile to better lead the nation. The silenced, in this case, brings a contradiction between what is prophetic, positive, auspicious, therefore desired by the President and the nation by the Pastor, and what is really said, emerged from what Malafaia has tried to silence all the time. The interdiscursive subject who sees in Bolsonaro the result of a vile, crazy choice, of little value returns with all the force through the window inside. Again, it should be pointed out that this is not an implicit discourse as postulated by Ducrot, but rather an already-produced one, independently, and elsewhere, showing its face, bursting into the speaker's utterance, in an emersion of silence in return.
In yet another example, we have two advertisements from 2017, about graduation in higher education. These pieces brought controversy by circulating discourses that silenced fundamental questions about teachers. The two advertisements circulate a discourse that graduating in courses such as pedagogy, with clear teacher training, would be a way to increase income, or, more popularly said, would be a kind of "moonlighting." Following the images: Source: Catraca Livre (2017).
Picture 2: publicity of a higher education with a Globo TV Network artist, Luciano Huck Source: Catraca Livre (2017).
Picture 3: publicity of a higher education with artist, Rodrigo Faro With the same words, probably because they are part of the same Kroton Group, both advertisements (Pictures 2 and 3) have the main words: "Second graduation: Become a teacher and increase your income", complemented for "The Pedagogical Training course has arrived. Take the 2nd Graduation and become a teacher." When thinking about a theory of silence, such as the one investigated by Orlandi (2007), one understands that, to say X: "become a teacher and increase his income", it is necessary to silence Y, that is, that the profession of teacher is seen, in publicity discourse, as something of second profession, second job, work that complements income, that is, something that people can work for, for example, during the day with anything else, and at night, when out of his business hours, moonlighting as a teacher, something that, according to the advertising, does not require much preparation, only the "second graduation" to be complemented, which is possible and can be done as a background. We have here again the interdiscursive subject, who understands the teaching work as something minor, which, after being expelled by the door, returns with all the force by the window.
After a lot of controversy about the contradiction, the misconception and the misunderstanding that this discourse propagated in the publicity advertisements produced in this process between the said and the silenced, these publicity pieces were taken out of circulation after the publication of a note of clarification in a network by UNOPAR 6 . The publication of the clarification note and the consequent withdrawal of the advertisements show, on the one hand, how much the subjects, no matter how counterintuitive this assertion may seem, have no interference whatsoever in their discourses, as the latter do not allow themselves to be governed by deliberate acts of the speakers and, on the other, the mistakes and the contradictions are also the fruit of an ideological position, that is, they present themselves as the manifestation of the values of a determined social group in permanent litigation with the values of other groups.

FINAL WORDS AND POSSIBILITY OF THEORETICAL DRIFT
Our interlocutor can expect from us a dialogue between Ducrot's postulates on the implicit and Eni Orlandi's propositions on his Theory of Silence. However, in addition to the present proposal for a central decision of this article, a fertility test of the theory proposed by Orlandi is taken up, extending, if possible, its conceptual scope to different data, it is a goal for another academic genre, perhaps a doctoral thesis. Whether intentional or not -it is not a matter for discursive theories of the French matrix this question of intentionalityin fact, the apparent contradictions and argumentative misconceptions show how the senses escape the subjects, in faults, thus making visible what sometimes is in the relation between the opaque and the transparent to the subjects of the discourses themselves, and, even more, the meanings that lie behind them and that do not allow themselves to be imprisoned in semantic dykes of any kind, as the discursive theories point out. Indeed, these faults, these misunderstandings are due to language, and in the same process are also due to history, therefore subject to description and interpretation.
In the cases of the daily media, brought here for analysis, there seems to be an element that goes beyond and succeeds to these misunderstandings and to these contradictions, appearing as clues, traces, symptoms in the arguments, which are cases that we seek to approach from the perspective of the theory of silence of Eni Orlandi. On the basis of materialism and also derived from the French discourse theory, silence for the Brazilian author is the very form of being in meanings in language, especially in the discourse modality. There is always an incompleteness of saying, in a silence that crosses the words, but which can be understood by emerging in clues in the discourses.
The relation between silence and equivocation, of the seemingly meaningless, brought by the formulation between a saying X, which seeks to emerge, and a Y that is silent, but which, in the cases analyzed, always comes to the fore, showing its interdiscursive face, the already-said thought before independently in another place. Thus, this silencing in Y returns in the symptom of the linguistic misunderstanding of the discursive argumentation of the cases listed here. It is in different acts of language that, in the last instance, retain/hold silence, thus in attempts to reinforce them and/or avoid them, even in these cases, by believing that the subject can repair or expose in their discourse arguments the most crystalline thought and reflection of their project to say.
Although few facts show that the Silent Theory proposed by the Brazilian researcher Eni Orlandi is productive to think the language outside a structuralist, formalist or even functionalist framework, that advocates the treatment of the language in use, without dispensing with the language, and in the same process, understanding the relation of the latter to history, to ideology, it should be noted that Eni Orlandi's Theory, unlike some of her detractors, is not a different designation for the notion of discursive formation. In this last one, taking the discourse as an object, Pêcheux is preoccupied strictly with relation between language, subject and ideology. In the theory of silence, Orlandi starts from the relation between language, subject and ideology to explain the crucial role of silence (and not of discourse) in the constitution of language and consequently of subjects in their umbilical relationship with ideology.
The main objective was to show the fecundity of the Theory of Silence. A theory thought, worked and developed in Brazilian soil, which is very important in our affirmation and scientific constitution, and presented here taking as corpus of data of daily media, given to circulate in several devices of discursive communication.
That said, we can say that in a more exhaustive research, with more similar cases in analysis, given its positive heuristic, it would be possible to propose a reformulation of Orlandi's own formula, in which one would have "to say X, you must (not) say Y", the parentheses in "no" would be precisely these contradictions said and silenced.
In view of this possibility of deriving the formula, we have a very interesting datum to analyze. Although not exhaustive as well, a controversy in a recent event occurred with the publication, by the Government of the State of Paraná, of Announcement Number 01, of the Public Contest Destined to Fill Vacancies in the Position of Military Police Cadet, State Military Police of Paraná (GOVERNO…, 2018).
In its first version, published on 09/08/2018, in Annex II, which deals with the evaluation of the professional profile -psychological evaluation of the candidates -in item C31, Masculinity, was described: "The individual must not be impressed with violent scenes, endure vulgarities and not be easily moved, nor show interest in romantic stories and love." To pass the contest, the candidate should have a regular or higher score in that.
Because it is considered prejudiced and discriminatory by several social actors and also by Institutions, such as the Regional Council of Psychology and also Brazilian Bar Association -PR, as the following statements attest, the Call Notice was rectified.
According to the aforementioned institutions: It is filled with prejudice of discrimination in the way it is placed. You can evaluate a woman, she has all this ability to face a difficult situation, ability to analyze all the variables that are involved in this situation, plan your action from the assessment she makes of the consequences that her action will have, then, this we cannot call masculinity(Mari Angela Oliveira, Conselho Regional de Psicologia do Paraná, in JORNAL NACIONAL, 2018).
This can create enormous constraints for the candidates. We understand that this will generate a large number of lawsuits, which may even compromise the very regularity of the contest. (José Augusto Araújo de Noronha, presidente da OAB-PR, in JORNAL NACIONAL, 2018).
In a note, the Military Police of Paraná "clarified that it is promoting the adjustment in the term that generated the polemic, for 'confrontation', without prejudice to the psychological testing necessary to define the professional profile required for the state military. It is interesting to note that in the PM's Note of Clarification, the term masculinity does not appear either. This is replaced by an adjective sentence "that generated the controversy". With this silencing already in the Note of Clarification, it is sought the erasure of a discursive legacy, about which the speaker would not like to have nothing more to say.
In the rectification of the Notice, published on August 13, 2018 (available in the same site, footnote 13), the item C31 Masculinity was replaced by the term Confrontation: "Ability of the individual not to be impressed by violent scenes, endure vulgarities and not to be moved easily." In order to pass the contest, the candidate should also have a regular or higher score in this regard.
The substitution of Masculinity by Confrontation, as well as the suppression of the phrase "neither demonstrating interest in romantic and love stories", initially present in the definition of the first item of psychological evaluation, is a lapidary example of the discursive functioning of the silence from the formula "to say X, you must (not) say Y". The term Masculinity, as a question to be charged in psychological assessment, especially in a textualdiscursive genre as Public Tender Notice, is completely out of step with the discursive memories in our society. It is about, in Marie-Anne Paveau's (2015) understanding, a nonvirtuous speech, that is, a discourse that is no longer adjusted to the ethically valid values in our society.
In the context of a state-run job vacancy admission process, Masculinity, a sense historically attached to men, can no longer be considered as a question to be asked in the psychological evaluation of the candidates, given that, in the current historical context, this term presents itself as an act of language with negative ethical value -prejudiced and discriminatory. On the other hand, Confrontation, although with practically the same historical and stereotyped definitions of Masculinity, since it asserts the "ability of the individual not to be impressed by violent scenes, to bear vulgarities and not to be easily moved", presents itself as an act of language of positive ethical value, since its more usual meaning is attached to the police officer's own profession.