Retórica: o poder da linguagem em discussão no movimento sofista

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the sophist movement and language, giving importance to rhetorical art as a tool of power and, as such, an instrument of political control in the way this art was exercised and promoted. The article seeks to discuss the sophists and some philosophers and the way they used language, their contributions and the main criticisms of the sophists. It is worth noting that the language game is the sophists' trademark for maintaining power, revealing that the sophist movement discussed the use of language, in particular the use of rhetoric and argumentation, as a way of constituting the individual in society. To this end, it is necessary to go through the historical-social context experienced, the origin of the sophist movement and its main representatives - Gorgias and Protagoras - as well as the concepts of language adopted. Thus, we rely on the philosophical literature on the subject. For this, we used an exploratory-argumentative methodology and bibliographical analysis. The theoretical framework covers several texts, mainly the book Poder, persuasão e produção de verdade: a ação dos sofistas, by Alice B. Haddad et al. (2018), Aristotle (1964; 2007), Plato (2011), Cassin (2005), André A. Ribeiro (2006) and others.