METHODOLOGICAL INTERSECTIONS: SCHOOL OF ANNALES, "CONTENT ANALYSIS" AND CONTROLLED HERMENEUTICS

Abstract

Recorded at least since the 1960s, the approximation of History with Linguistics and Anthropology began to dialogue more intensely in historical research. With the methodological assumptions introduced by the Annales School, the most diverse languages have become privileged objects for analysis, increasingly seen as metaphors for reality. The various discourses (written, oral, architectural, urbanistic, iconographic, musical, gestural and ritual) began to be decoded more frequently, seeking to apprehend their elements of social tension and their historical meanings, their production and their circulation in each social environment. From this variety of sources, new analytical tools began to provide instruments of historiographical making, such as Laurence Bardin's method of "Content Analysis". Starting from the premise that historiography is the result of reflection on the nature of the historical, it is between the lines of the discourses of the sources that the historian is able to calculate the frequencies provided by the ciphered data, which makes it possible to extract categories and models, in a "controlled hermeneutics" process. This article invites the academic community to reflect on such methodologies and their importance for the analysis of the types of discourses used as sources in historiography.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2024.029-036