Based upon Critical Discourse Analysis, this study analyses a report of a meeting, distributed as a circular to residents of a middle-class apartment building in Brasília. The circular is the outcome of a meeting held between the apartment building's representative, local businesspeople and Federal District Government authorities concerning "street dwellers" in the surrounding of the apartment building and local business establishments. The circular is considered discursively in terms of its generic structure, modality, intertextuality, presupposition and evaluation. The analysis seeks to discuss the naturalization of misery in contemporary societies through the internalization of hegemonic discourses that serve to erase basic social rights. The study argues that this is due to the repetition of these discourses in different institutional environments and in various text types.
Critical Discourse Analysis; street dwellers; social apartheid