THE CONSTRUCTION OF COHERENCE AND INTERTEXTUALITY IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE: AN ANALYSIS IN LIGHT OF TEXTUAL LINGUISTICS

Abstract

This study analyzes the inaugural speeches of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, delivered on January 1, 2003, and January 1, 2023, through the lens of the Textual Linguistics (TL), focusing on intertextuality, intentionality, and textual coherence. The choice of corpus is justified by the historical character of these moments, which represent milestones in the trajectory of Brazilian politics, both due to their contemporaneity and the return to the presidency after two decades, interrupting a previous hegemony. The central objective of the research is to examine how these textual factors contribute to the construction of meaning, highlighting how the text is organized as a coherent whole. The theoretical framework is based on Koch (1997; 2009) and Marcuschi (2008), whose studies allow us to understand the interaction between the pragmatic factors of textuality and the materiality of discourse. The methodology adopted is descriptive and qualitative in nature, analyzing discourses and highlighting the mechanisms that enable the production and articulation of meaning. The results indicate that intertextuality creates links with past events and discourses, intentionality guides the effect of meaning desired by the speaker, and textual coherence ensures the organization and intelligibility of the text. After the analysis, we conclude that these factors are essential for the constitution of political discourse, providing analytical tools that can contribute to the understanding of discursive practices and the construction of meaning in institutional contexts.