Homosexualities in discourse: silence as a cause of concealing social groups

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion about silence as an agent responsible for the eradication of the struggle and (re)existence of LGBTQ+ social groups persecuted by the Brazilian military regime on the grounds that they are considered to be "deviant" in season. As theoretical support, we use the theoretical reflections on silence and discourse, based on Eni Orlandi (1992). We understand that this research collaborates with the need to think of homosexuality as articulated to the discourse, contributing to the understanding of the silencing of the discussion on these themes. Thus, we aimed to analyze the social relevance of a newspaper that opposed the repressive ideology of a military government in the 1970s and 1980s, established in Brazil. In traditional approaches, in the language sciences, silence is given a negative condition by being considered only a lack of words. However, Orlandi refers to it as something that is not the shadow of the verbal, it is not the emptiness: it is something that means. From these questions, we will reflect on the relation between discourse and silence in relation to homosexuality, a hypothesis that we defend still to perpetuate in the contemporaneity in our country. In order to do so, we analyze the article "The words: Why fear them?", Found in the newspaper, dedicated to the discussion of homosexuality entitled Lampião da Esquina, from which we reflect on the effects of meaning that are produced when we choose certain endings for homosexual subjects.