INTERPRETING BETWEEN THE LINES OF PERSONAL LETTERS OF 1953: SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT SOCIO-HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ASPECTS

Abstract

Begining in 2008 as part of a Masters in Language project, personal and family letters written by our ancestors in the 1940s and 1950s were analysed in this study, searching for revealing signs of history, culture and identity. It was important for this research to consider the language on a sociocultural conception and treat it as a social activity, as a set of signs capable of representing the surrounding reality, at the same time that is formed through verbal interaction. Starting from this conception and considering that the language unmasked aspects of the cultural time in which it was written, as well as identity aspects of people involved in this interaction process (writer and recipient), we tried to identify and interpret, in a personal letter of 1953, these socio-historical and cultural characteristics, contrasting with the current culture. We also recovered the story of an old passion almost erased by an unrequited love, that time was able to yellow but not destroy sheets of paper that revealed this love. Moreover, were analyzed features of personal letter genre. The theorical sources for this study were Bakhtin (2004), Marcuschi (2004), Bazerman (2006), Lopes (1986), among others.