THE VOICES OF POWER: LAW, LANGUAGE, AND MODALIZATION IN THE PERFORMATIVITY OF JUDICIAL SENTENCES – A STUDY ON DISCURSIVE MARKS IN THE DECISION OF THE NOVA BRASÍLIA CASE

Abstract

This study investigates how legal discourse, when materialized in the judicial ruling, performs power and institutes assertions/truths through epistemic and deontic modalizations, revealing the symbolic and political dimension of judicial language. The general objective was to analyze the discursive markers of performativity and modalization present in judicial decisions, especially in the judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Case Favela Nova Brasília vs. Brazil (2017). The research adopted a qualitative methodology, based on content analysis and discourse analysis, articulating theoretical frameworks from Foucault, Bakhtin, Austin, and Estrela. The analyses showed that judicial rulings construct their authority through linguistic structures that naturalize the rationality of power and exclude the lay addressee, operating an institutional performance sustained by technical lexicon, impersonality, and the ritualization of legal text. The results confirm that legal discourse is a performative speech act, in which: (i) saying becomes doing; (ii) the verb becomes norm; and (iii) language becomes an instrument of symbolic governance. Thus, the relevance of the study is justified by proposing a critical reading of judicial language as a social practice of power and exclusion, offering paths to rethink the democratization of legal discourse. The study invites reflection on who is entitled to speak the law and who merely listens to it, expanding the ethical, social, cultural, political, and discursive horizons of justice.