TRIDIMENSIONALIDADE DA LINGUAGEM CONTÁBIL EM PUBLICAÇÕES DE PERIÓDICOS CIENTÍFICOS BRASILEIROS

Abstract

Accounting, as the language of the business world, can be approached in syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic perspectives. Not explicit, the researchers use the tridimensionality of accounting language to support their investigations. This study investigates the accounting language adopted in the theoretical underpinning of publications of Brazilian scientific journals in the period from 2001 to 2012, regarding to the areas of Accounting for External Users and Financial, Credit and Capital Markets. To this end, a descriptive study using Content Analysis were performed. The results show that semantic and pragmatic languages excel syntactic languages. Articles regarding Accounting theme for External Users use more pragmatic approach and the ones of Markets use, mainly, semantic approach. Research on standards convergence used, mainly, syntactic approach, which is justified by the need to explain normative and practical procedures. Those regarding Corporate Finances prioritized the semantic approach, showing concern with the meaning of the information produced by the accounting. The research on issues involving the Social Balance used more pragmatic approach, focusing on the utility and reflexes of such information on the business environment. Thus, this study contributes to the extent that reveals trends in thematic investigations of accounting, particularly in focused areas in the analysis, the types of language used in the development of studies approach, proposing a methodology to classify the studies in order to identify the approach.