“FIRE” IN CONSTRUCTION: MEANINGS AND USES FROM A PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This study investigates the meanings and uses of the word “fire” as perceived by sixth-semester undergraduate students in the Portuguese Language program at the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), Ministro Petrônio Portella Campus. It aims to analyze the concepts attributed to the word by the students, as well as the utterances they produce, in order to understand how different contexts of use contribute to the construction of meaning. The research is grounded in studies related to Pragmatics and to the notions of meaning, sense, and context, drawing on contributions from authors such as Martelotta (2003), Fiorin (2004), Levinson (2007), Flores (2008), Góes and Cruz (2006), Paveau (2006), Neves (1997), and Moura (1999), among others. The corpus consists of data produced by the participating students through a questionnaire designed to investigate their perceptions of the word “fire” and its different uses. The analysis was conducted based on categories established from the collected data, relating the concepts presented by the participants to the utterances they produced as examples of use. The results indicate that the students recognize different possibilities of interpretation for the word “fire” and are able to produce varied utterances based on the meanings attributed to it, demonstrating the influence of context on the construction of meaning. Thus, the study contributes to reflections on language use and on the importance of analyzing the contexts in which utterances are produced and interpreted in Portuguese language teaching.