Favela Metaphors

A Sociocognitive Study of the Lexical-Semantic Creation in the Maré Complex (RJ)

Abstract

This study presents an analysis of metaphorical conceptualization processes in the popular linguistic variety of favelas, emphasizing a sociocognitive approach to language. The investigation is based on empirical data collected through the researcher’s participant observation in the field, as well as real records from community media sources, particularly from issues of Jornal Maré de Notícias—a well-established local newspaper with over thirteen years of circulation in the Maré Favela Complex (Rio de Janeiro). The research is grounded in theoretical frameworks such as Biderman (1967), who recognizes speakers as active agents in lexical transformations, and Lakoff and Johnson (2002[1980]), whose Conceptual Metaphor Theory understands language as an expression of the human conceptual system, shaped by cognitive mechanisms that reflect social, identity-based, and imaginative experiences. Several metaphors were identified that express ways of thinking and feeling about the favela’s social space, such as “Favela is War,” which conveys the historically constructed warlike imagery of these territories, and “Favela is Resistance,” which redefines the territory as a locus of struggle and historical continuity of Black bodies’ resistance, from the quilombos to contemporary urban peripheries. From this perspective, the study proposes an epistemological renewal in linguistic research, by integrating cognition, society, and language in the analysis of popular lexicon. In the short term, this article contributes to the mapping of a little-studied linguistic variety, and in the long term, it provides support for teacher education, promoting a critical and conscious understanding of the cognitive and sociocultural diversity of the Portuguese language.