Carlota Mello’s discourse in a single act: the feminine ethos before the war

Abstract

This article, which results from a broader project focused on the analysis of the identity construction of the military woman, focuses on the discourse of a brazilian nurse, who served in the Second World War as a volunteer. Anchored in the theoretical constructs of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study is based on analytical life stories, selected from interviews. As a multidisciplinary science, the CDA allows theoretical-methodological connections that provide an accurate description and interpretation of ethnographic data. We use here discourse studies allied to the theory of positioning. The first results point to the construction of the self of a mature social protagonist, who lived in a context of culture where the woman of the time rehearsed the first steps towards equal rights.