Semantic-enunciative analysis of the word femicide in Law 13.104/2015 and in dictionaries

Abstract

In this work, we carried out a semantic-enunciative study of the word femicide, analyzing its designations from the Semantic theory of the Event. The corpus of the work consists of definitions of this word in the Brazilian Law 13.104/2015, in the Portuguese Online Dictionary and in the Houaiss Uol dictionary. The movement of meanings of the word femicide in different enunciative scenes as a way of showing its importance for denouncing violence against women instigated us theoretically. We take the dictionary and the Law as grammatization instruments, thus placing ourselves in the field of the History of Linguistic Ideas. In this way, we consider the dictionary, as well as Law 13.104/2015, a linguistic, historical and social instrument that allows us to observe, through the designation which are the meanings kept, which are divided, which are added and which are the possible silencing. We will use the concepts of enunciation, designation and enunciation space, as conceived by Guimarães (1995, 2002, 2018). For the analysis, we took into account the polysemy of the language that seeks to signify, re-signify the real, and, in this case, give visibility to meanings ignored by society, in view of the Brazilian reality, the 5th country with the highest rate of murders of females in the world.