Imaginary formation and subjectivity in social networks

In this work, we seek to understand, from the theoretical-methodological perspective of Discourse Analysis, the imaginary formation and the subjectivities produced by it in the discursiveness of the Portuguese Language community on Facebook. In the material we analysed, we identified three predominantly functioning imaginaries: the 'Imaginary of linguistic correctness' affiliated with the memory of colonisation, signifying the fluid Brazilian language as wrong, flawed, while the imaginary language of normative grammar is signified as the correct language. The 'Linguistic imaginary of Lusophony', also affiliated with the discourses of colonisation, signifying the Portuguese language as one and the Brazilian language as a flawed copy of the language of Portugal. The 'Imaginary of globalisation' is affiliated by meaning to the discourses of colonisation and the discourses of linguistic decolonisation. These imaginaries constitute the imaginary formation that shapes meanings in the Portuguese language community, producing subjectivities split by the functioning, in the form of contradiction, of the discursive memory of colonisation and the discursive memory of decolonisation.