THE REINTERPRETATION OF WORDS, THE REPRESENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE, AND LANGUAGE GAMES IN PRISON

Abstract

The investigation of language within the scope of this research is conducted based on the use of language games and words in the daily context of prisons, considering who participates in this communication, the peculiarities of prison language, how it is organized, and how it is perceived in each event. The setting for this study is the Men’s Penitentiary of Florianópolis, located in Santa Catarina, Brazil. In this regard, the subjects of the research are individuals deprived of freedom, and the object of study is the language used within the prison. The general objective is to investigate, based on the vocabulary used in prisons, the dynamics of sociability. Regarding the methodological procedures, the research is characterized as descriptive, bibliographical, exploratory, and qualitative, employing ethnographic aspects such as observational methods and interviews, with a semi-structured interview script containing five open-ended questions as the data collection instrument. A total of 26 interviews were conducted, and more than 400 terms were collected. Based on the analyses and conjectures about the use of prison language, it is understood that language games are present in spaces of deprivation of liberty, contextualized by an extensive and collective use representing shared forms of life within the prison, similarities of terms through familiarity, and established rules.