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This paper examines and compares, in the light of French Discourse Analysis, four life stories - collected through interviews - that were produced by Brazilian migrants that live illegally in France or in England. The main objective is to find out the discursive representations (of themselves, of the others, of the world) constructed by such individuals in their narratives and, at the same time, verify if and how their irregular situation interferes with their routine in the new country. In order to analyze and compare the four stories, some categories that integrate Maingueneau's Global Semantics (2005) were used: themes, vocabulary, enunciative deixis and enunciation mode. If the results reveal differences in the way of telling and evaluating the migratory experience, they also allow us to apprehend similarities, such as the primarily economic motivation to migrate, the difficulties (cultural, linguistic etc.) faced especially when arriving in the destination country and the precarious working conditions to which Brazilian migrants are submitted due to being in an irregular situation. Even though two of the interviewed subjetcts have preferred to be silent on this issue, their opinions can be implicitly identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze five science communication channels at YouTube Brazil, partners of Science Vlogs Brazil collective, aiming to identify the science representation in their most viewed videos from a qualitative analysis. It was noticed that the channels tend to reinforce the hegemonic social representation of science, marked by the emphasis on Exact and Natural Sciences, mainly themes of the Universe, the focus of scientific activity as something that brings certainty (and a few doubts or uncertainties), besides representing scientist as a man. Nevertheless, there have also been features of science that are beyond this traditional representation, such as the mention to controversies involving the scientific community - especially in canal do Pirula. This duality reflects the dynamic process of social representations, identified by Moscovivi and Abric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss the relationships between the knowledge produced by science and those from common sense, based on the Social Representations Theory (SRT) with emphasis on the dialogical approach. It starts with the Serge Moscovici's writings and seeks to establish relationships between his motivations for the proposition of the SRT and his defense of a rationality related to everyday knowledge. Considering authors of the SRT that highlight the socio-genetic, dynamic and dialogical character of social representations, we point differences between these knowledges, however, without considering them in a reduced and distanced way. Finally, it reflects on the relevance of the dialogical epistemology of social representations to overcome the dichotomies between these knowledges, highlighting the role of communication in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to identify the social representations constructed by forensic experts on probation, therefore standing at the marginal period of the rite of passage. The notion of rite that pervades the article is based on Turner (1974), Van Gennep (1978), DaMatta (1978, 1983), Rivière (1997), Segalen (2000) and Peirano (2003). It is defined as an extraordinary moment when values and knowledge are introduced to initiates in order to incorporate them into the cultural universe they are about to enter. Social representations constructed over this period will present peculiarities inherent to the position held by initiates. According to Sperber (2001), from an anthropological perspective social representations emerge from a composition articulated around the representation itself, its contents, a user and a producer (who might sometimes be the user himself or herself). Mental representations are those constructed inside the user. Public representations are mental representations shared among the members of a given group. Each member of a social group or community has an inner gamma of mental representations; when publicized, part of that knowledge or representations will be shared among the members of the group. Thus, subjects will construct their mental representations based on that first publicized. The ethnographic method made it possible to follow the initiates from the separation stage to the margin moment. Initiates were approached by participant and simple observation from May 2009 to June 2012. The representations that circulated in the liminal stage considered the work as: emotional distress, a positive value, interfering in family life, identified as CSI, positive and negative in the eyes of the police, black humour and lack of resources. It is worth to mention that humility and criticism with positive aspects were practiced, despite the initiates being newcomers to the public service. That confirms theorizing made by anthropologists to whom humility and moderation are the kind of behavior to be expected in the marginal stage of the rite of passage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the mental representation of the perfect aspect and its possible morphological realizations in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and in the French spoken in France. We considered that the perfect is the aspect that relates a past situation to its present relevance. The past situation can persist in the present (universal perfect) or not (existential perfect). In Portuguese, we verified that the universal perfect can be expressed by the compound past, by the present tense and by the periphrasis "estar" + present participle. The existential perfect can be expressed by the combination of the simple past and other elements in the sentence. In French, the universal perfect can be expressed by the present tense combined with certain adverbial expressions. The existential perfect can be expressed by the combination of the compound past and other elements in the sentence. Despite the differences in the perfect aspect realization, we considered that this aspect can be syntactically represented in both languages by an aspectual functional head different from that one with grammatical aspect information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]