Utterance path taken by the word “system” in the texts on university quota-settling laws

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of eight legal texts, namely those that deal with reservation of allocations for students in public universities in the State of Rio de Janeiro. From a discursive perspective, which relates meanings to the ways socially constituted language takes hold of them (MAINGUENEAU, 1993), and based on Foucault’s (1969) concepts of archive and discontinuity, the focus of this analysis is the use of the word “system” in the preliminary part of organization of said laws, exactly at its outline presentation, which is the part of the legal text that presents a summary of the proposition stated in the law, and article 1st, which limits the object of the law.