ABOUT THE BOOK 

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This book is a profound inquiry into the meaning and practices of legal discourse in Latin America. Through multidisciplinary perspectives (applied linguistics, law, discourse analysis, sociology, and more), researchers from Argentina and Brazil come together to address a central concern: missing rights.

Some of the topics covered in this book: 

• A critique of the monopoly of speech: Who has the right to speak the law? This article discusses how the legal field disputes the right to “speak the law,” analyzing everything from institutional “discursive paraphernalia” (its rituals, legal texts, and technologies) to how the legal permeates and shapes political and cultural relations in everyday life.

• Voices demanding what is owed: The chapters focus on structural inequalities in Brazil and Argentina, such as the mass incarceration of racialized youth, criminal selectivity, gender violence, and the precariousness of indigenous rights, in a context of constant authoritarian threats. The law is not neutral: it is a field of struggle. 

• A comparative binational and multidisciplinary dialogue: A rich academic conversation that transcends borders and languages, bringing together prestigious institutions such as Unicamp, UNC, UBA, UEA, and PUC-SP.

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Formas de Dizer o Direito examines the formal language and processes of subjectivation that are constructed in prison, in police reports, or in the struggle for memory and justice from a discursive and critical perspective of power. It is an essential tool for understanding how legal discourse activates and deactivates memories, institutes norms, and inscribes identities in our normative worlds.

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Essential reading for critically thinking about our rights that have been won, claimed, and are still pending!

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