« Les voix du rebut » : pratiques orales de positionnement social en contexte d’interactions asymétriques

• Main Author: Thaïs Machado-Borges
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Maison des Science de l'Homme 2017-11-01
• Series: Brésil(s)
• Subjects: speech; women; games of social positioning; garbage; value
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/bresils/2325

Garbage – that which is excluded, put aside, hidden, buried, taken out of sight, and rejected – is the starting point of this paper. Approached as refuted matter, garbage circulates between private and public arenas, between centers of power and forgotten peripheries. Approached as a social metaphor, garbage marks the limits between categories, between those things and people considered to have value, and those considered to be useless and disposable. In this paper, I discuss the use of language as a strategy for social positioning by analyzing some everyday interactions taking place among women from different social classes gathered during fieldwork in Southeastern Brazil. As I show, when practiced in asymmetric interactions, these « garbage speeches » not only classify people in terms of status and value, but also reinforce already existing differences. At focus in the present analysis are oral practices of social positioning where status and social exclusion are harshly negotiated.