230548 The Discourse about Urban Violence in Brazil and the US (S) (SoSe 2015)

Fourteen of the 50 world’s most violent cities, as measured by homicide rates, are in Brazil (Ortega, 2012). The average Brazilian citizen has to deal with a real risk of violent assault on a daily basis, in any public place. In the US, urban violence is mostly gang related. For instance, the fights among the sureño and norteño gangs in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. The use of metaphor in talk reveals how people think about an issue, what are they values, how they relate to it and feel about it. Metaphor serves as an important tool in mediating knowledge, as well as in building understanding among opposing sides (Cameron et al., 2010). Speakers also express their opinion about phenomena in society through the use of metaphors, for instance when talking about the issue of the constant threat of urban violence in Brazil, politicians and the media often speak in terms of losing and winning a ‘battle’ against violence. We aim at discussing these issues and analysing data collected on a project on urban violence in Brazil and the US. There are some common causes for urban violence in Brazil and the US, as unemployment, drug addiction and dealing, poverty and hunger, but there is a difference in the way local governments deal with those issues, which are a main concern of American and Brazilian societies.