The construction of Brazilian mastership: semantic-enunciative analysis of ‘senhor’ in colonial and imperial Brazil.

Abstract

In this research, we investigate the semantic-enunciative functioning of the word "senhor" circulating in Portuguese royal letters from the colonial period dated from 1530 to 1820 and in Brazilian abolitionist/emancipationist legislation from the imperial period, specifically in those dated from May 7, 1831, the date of the promulgation of the Diogo Feijó Law, until May 13, 1888, the date of the promulgation of the Lei Áurea (Golden Law). We consider that analyzing the meanings of "senhor" in legal writing during the mentioned historical periods, in which slavery developed in Brazil, will show us how they were constructed, when they began to circulate, and if there is a difference in meanings between the two periods. As we demonstrated in Ferraz (2014), a genuinely Brazilian mastership developed here, in which the slave owner maintained power that was configured in different spheres, and even though it was legally extinguished with the signing of the Lei Áurea on May 13, 1888, the mastership, linguistically, continued to function in many of its aspects in that society. From this perspective, we seek to answer the following question: What does the word "senhor" mean in the legislation on Brazilian slavery? Thus, aiming to demonstrate that the meanings of "senhor" are not transparent but were constituted in enunciation, we analyze how Brazilian mastership is characterized, in light of the Semantics of the Event, according to Guimarães (2002, 2005, 2011, 2018), combined with some studies of history/historiography, aiming to prove two hypotheses: a) in the royal letters, a process of constructing the meanings of Brazilian lordship in the enslavement of indigenous and African peoples is materialized, in which the meanings of "senhor" relate to the one who has power and the right to speak in the struggles between lord and enslaved, and from this relationship, in the struggles between lord and other institutions; b) in the so-called Brazilian emancipationist/abolitionist legislation, the word "senhor" acquires meanings that conflict with the idea of emancipation or abolition, materializing meanings that functioned in the laws of the colonial period. Through the analyses, we demonstrate that, in the colonial period, "senhor" is determined by the meanings of person, colonizer, resident, mill owner, king's vassal, nobleman, protected in debts and labor, has will and therefore punishes, buys, sells, and determines the price of slaves. In the imperial period, "senhor" is also designated as importer, bidder, continues to be a buyer of slaves, person, individual, administrator, punisher, the one who has will, power, and authority. In this way, the word "senhor" was constituted by being formulated and reformulated as it was enunciated by speakers from different social places and distinct periods within the Brazilian enunciation space.