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Part of
The Pragmatics of Adaptability
Edited by Daniel N. Silva and Jacob L. Mey
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 319] 2021
► pp. 117–142

Chapter 6
Self-containment and contamination

Two competing circuits of adaptability

| Federal University of Santa Catarina
| Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

This chapter explores two competing models of adaptation of discourses: self-containment and contamination. The first model is contradictorily a non-adaptable framework that scales the social circulation of text and talk as expandable, i.e. scalable, yet seemingly un-modifiable in its expansion. The second is embedded in the singularity of encounters, and does not aim to be valid everywhere in the same way. To investigate the circulation of these models of adaptation in contemporary Brazil, we tackle some of the narratives forging the 2016 Olympic sporting event and the 2014 World Cup. The established connections produce a provisional panorama in which the friction of scalable and nonscalable narratives produces collaborative trans-contextual plots which are the outcome of relations of mutuality.

Keywords: discourse, neoliberalism, textual analysis, scalability, contamination
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The self-contained Olympic model in Rio de Janeiro
  • 3.A contaminated response to monolithic models
  • 4. By way of engaging with the projected network
  • 5.The monolith is ‘out of joint’
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.319.06sil
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