LANGUAGE IN TRAVEL IN THE TRANSLATION OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FOR BUSINESSMEN IN BRAZIL AND PORTUGAL: THE CASE OF THE WBCSD

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to study the language in travel in the translation of sustainable development for businessmen from Brazil and Portugal. The WBCSD, the entity that is the focus of this study, acts in the route of meaning with the publication of guides that aim to guide the discourse of sustainable management in the corporate environment. The survey analyzed the power struggle that occurs in the definition of the concept of sustainable development (SD) and proposed to think tanke metaphor as a way to translate the relationship of business with social and environmental issues. The analysis of the discourses, in the light of the deconstruction of Derrida, allowed to study the political and institutional structures that facilitate and hinder the reception of the discussion of sustainable development. These structures were developed in the “history of Western thought,” either through “philosophical texts”, or “forms and institutions such as government, university, national identity, the concept of gift or the idea of grieving” (WOLFREYS, 2009, p. 51). There is the mourning of presence, the mourning of reason, the mourning of the subject and the mourning of any sovereign authority (DERRIDA, 2013, p. 105). The metaphor of the Sustainable Company, developed in this process of translation, was found to be insufficient to accommodate the different interpretations since the intention is to assimilate and integrate. The think tanke metaphor, on the other hand, recognizes the language in travel that demonstrates the contradictions and ambiguities of the WBCSD’s discourse and welcomes the diverse translations on SD. It assumes a thought of alterity that translates into the deconstruction of the relation between guest (socio-environmental question) and host (company). The host becomes hostage to the vagaries of the guest (climate change, water availability, biodiversity etc), as the “ host becomes the hostage of the guest” (Derrida, 2003, p. 109).

Keywords:
deconstruction; metaphor; language in travel