“MESSED WITH THE WRONG FAGGOT”: THE CHANGE IN THE PROJECT OF SAYING FROM A CONVERSATION TO A REPORT ON SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

Abstract

This article is an excerpt from the dissertation “You messed with the wrong faggot”: the change in the project of saying from a conversation to a complaint on social media sites, by Camila Franz Marquez, supervised by Prof. Dr. Karina Giacomelli. It investigates, from the perspective of Dialogical Discourse Analysis (DDA), how a private dialogue between a psychologist and a patient, conducted via WhatsApp, turns into a public complaint on the social network Facebook. The research is based on a real case in which a young homosexual man, taken by his parents to a psychological consultation with a proposal for a “gay cure”, later comes into conflict with the professional through text messages. Based on the theoretical assumptions of the Bakhtin Circle, especially the concepts of discourse genre, evaluative accent, discursive intention and other people’s discourse, the study analyzes the statements involved in this episode, observing the change in the sphere of circulation and the resulting effects of meaning. The methodology follows the description-analysis-interpretation model proposed by Sobral (2009), revealing the ideological clash between two projects of speech — one that pathologizes homosexuality and the other that affirms it as a legitimate identity. It is concluded that social networks function as devices of valuation and discursive resistance, enabling the transformation of an experience of oppression into an instrument of collective denunciation and ethical-political repositioning.