This thesis analyses discursive processes in an anthropological context. Fieldwork among caboclos, peasants in Amazonia, reveals a community both conforming to and resisting Brazilian hegemonic culture. This ethnographic account utilizes data of oral discourse interwoven with various theoretical perspectives, such as discourse analysis, interpretive anthropology, and semiotics. The caboclo constant re-creation of the universe, society, and self-identity is accessed through 'talk'. The first part of this work presents an overview of the historical and social conditions of the production of discourse. The second part illustrates the role of everyday discourse in constructing perceptions of the world by using caboclos' staple food, manioc, as a theme illuminating the integration of language and belief systems. The third part provides some crucial situations for the understanding of the generation of political dissention and through contact events and the negotiation of meanings in pedagogical, religious, and media contexts. Through the use of tropes--metaphor and irony--cultures acceptably transgress, modify, and re-create norms and power relations.
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