Subjective positioning and academic dialogue: the case of metaphorical statements

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the subjective positioning that appear in relation to the presence of metaphorical statements (ME) in the academic dialogue. We characterize MEs as relatively autonomous statements that materialize allusive points of view by poetic formulation. We maintain that, as such, the MEs compel to recover as their cause a discourse frame related to rhetorical-stylistic ways of saying, which in turn explain the subjective positioning of response reflected in the enunciation. The theoretical framework is the Dialogic Approach to Argumentation and Polyphony. The analysis, which focuses on the case of a ME in a text by Lacan and taken up in a university textbook, shows the differences in meaning that arise in the occurrence of the ME in the discursive chain in which it appears and in the consequent responsive positioning that is configured in one and another discursivity.