From Domingos Jorge Velho to Zumbi dos Palmares: a semantic-enunciative analysis of the process of naming and renaming a street

Abstract

In this study, we seek to reflect on the semantic-enunciative functioning of the naming process and subsequent renaming of a street in the city of São José do Rio Preto-SP, which was first named Domingos Jorge Velho Street and later Zumbi dos Palmares Street. We verified the name designation processes of the above-mentioned street in order to try to understand the key point of the evenemencial setting: what do the events of naming and renaming choose as memorable to mean a city street? This study is based on the assumption that the meaning of language is located in the study of enunciation, which puts us in the theoretical and methodological perspective of the Semantics of the Event (GUIMARÃES, 2002). We inferred, then, that the different texts mobilized in our analysis mean because of different rememorizing, naming the street sometimes Domingos Jorge Velho sometimes Zumbi dos Palmares as honorable subjects, and able, or not, to mean a city street. Therefore, from our analysis, we verified that the name of the street and its replacement appear as ways to transform something in event, what leads us to understand that, when receiving a name, a street also receives historical concreteness.