DISCOURSE AS A BASIS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY: A PRAGMATIC APPROACH

Abstract

Human beings have a communicative nature and this characteristic predisposes them to establish interpersonal relationships. In this sense, discourse fulfills a primary function for the construction of the representative image of people's identity in social interaction. Consequently, this work aimed to explain from a linguistic, pragmatic and documentary vision how discourse, through speech acts, enables the communication practice with which people reproduce their image-reality. The study is mainly based on the theoretical contributions on the image of Goffman (2001), ideology and identity of Van Dijk (1998), the theory of speech acts of Austin and Searle (1962-1979-2001). Finally, this theoretical reflection allowed us to conclude that speech acts account for verbal behaviors and, therefore, for the identities that are housed in the discursive forms used by language users to construct their image.