Forced displacement and guarded permanence, territory and frontier: Metaphors of space in the representation of homelessness in Folha de S. Paulo

Abstract

This paper presents results of a research project aimed to identify representations in online journalism regarding actions and public policies towards the homeless population. The research, carried out within the context of critical discourse studies (VAN DIJK, 2009, FAIRCLOUGH, 2010, VIEIRA; RESENDE, 2016) and the interdiscursive analyses of public policies (RESENDE, 2018; FISCHER, 2016), considered Folha de S. Paulo (in its digital platform), to compose a comprehensive corpus of the published news about the homeless population in a period of three years. The composition of the corpus considered the Portuguese language keywords ‘(morador)(a)(es)+(de rua)’, ‘(pessoas)(população)+(em situação)/(de rua)’ applied to the journalistic vehicle search tool. Metaphor (CHARTERIS-BLACK, 2004) was the analytical category that guided the mapping of data in NVivo software. In this paper, the specific focus are metaphors used to represent the displacements and permanences of the homeless population in the city, in texts thematizing actions and public policies. The analyzes pointed out that metaphorical meanings in this corpus have a justification effect for dehumanizing actions and public policies aimed at the homeless population.