Linguística e Poética:

a vogal “u” no Poema Sujo de Ferreira Gullar

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of Ferreira Gullar's "Poema Sujo" (Dirty Poem) based on the notion of the poetic function of language as formulated by Roman Jakobson. Understood as a linguistic operation focused on the very construction of the message, the effect of the phenomenon of the poetic function of language manifests itself in the interplay between sound and meaning, producing unusual effects. The analysis focuses on the recurrence of the vowel "u" in the opening lines of Gullar's poem, especially in the passage leading to the line "azul teu cu" (blue your ass). It argues that the poetic effect resides not only in the presence of a term considered vulgar, but in the way the sonority of the vowel "u," sometimes stressed, sometimes unstressed, organizes the syntagmatic chain until a break in the pattern—a frustrated expectation—destabilizes the reader's listening. The study mobilizes Jakobsonian concepts of selection and combination to demonstrate how the poem's sonic construction engenders a rhythm that prepares the final shock. Jakobson attributes this phenomenon to the "irresistible effect" of poetic language: the emergence of the unexpected through the working with words of a verbal message. Although the notion of linguistic arbitrariness is briefly referred to, the emphasis is on how language, in its poetic dimension, reveals its capacity for meaning based on the formal interplay between its constituent elements.