Testimonies from homeless people

What are their stories of resistance?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present enunciative-discursive analyses of testimonies collected from homeless people in the city of Paris. To this end, the research is based on the theoretical-methodological framework of enunciative French discourse analysis (Maingueneau, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2015), circumscribed by the ideas developed by Greimasian semiotics (Barros, 2008; Fiorin, 2008, 2009; Greimas; Courtés, 2011) and studies on issues related to prejudice and intolerance in/through language (Barros, 2011; Tocaia, 2018, 2023). Methodologically, using the four levels proposed by ‘global semantics’ in relation to issues of ‘discursive syntax and semantics’, we considered the testimonies as discourses and sought to examine how the projections of enunciation occur in the enunciated, to define the framework of ideological values in which these discourses are inserted, to verify how some social imaginaries are reproduced in the testimonies and, in quick strokes, to deduce the actor of the enunciation (an ethos) of a minoritised social group considered to have no voice. The results make it possible to understand, in the texts analysed, the problems and difficulties of people who, in a situation of vulnerability, try to resist countless social inequalities.