15 RECIIS – R. Eletr. de Com. Inf. Inov. Saúde. Rio de Janeiro, v.4, n.2, p.15-21, Jun., 2010 [www.reciis.cict.fiocruz.br] e-ISSN 1981-6286 The three subjects of intra-discourse dialogue in social studies on the attribution of meaning: consequences for evaluation Fernando Lefevre Public Health Faculty, São Paulo University, São Paulo, Brazil flefevre@usp.br Ana Maria Cavalcanti Lefevre Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo Research Institute, São Paulo University, São Paulo, Brazil ana@ipdsc.com.br DOI: 10.3395/reciis.v4i2.291en Abstract The current article discusses the relationship that basic communication presents in empirical social research presenting the attribution of meaning to significant events in which social actors are involved. It postulates the existence of three subjects in action in this relationship: the subject of collective thought, the subject of researcher and author of the empirical study and the subject of the reader of this research. The second and third are classical subjects of study, where the first is a novelty introduced by the Discourse of the Collective Subject method. No doubt, what is generally seen as a result of research and the fruit of the work of the researcher/author, the collective thought reconstituted for the current study is granted, in this methodology, the statute of subject of the research. Beginning with this idea of three subjects and their complex relationships must be perfectly clear in these studies so that criticism and quality evaluation can take place to an adequate degree. Keywords public opinion polls; relation of communication; quality evaluation; discourse of the col- lective subject; subjects of discourse Original article The thesis It is postulated that: 1. In the elementary network of communication present in the reading of an applied social science text, which has as its base, an empirical study of the attribution of meaning, we must have three subjects: reality expressing itself; the researcher/author commenting or interpreting or discussing, this reality meta-discursively; the reader of the text processing (cognitively) these two isolated subjects, as well as relationship between the two. 2. The indistinction between these three subjects makes critical exercise more difficult, the search for the truth and the possibility of an evaluation of the quality of studies about the attribution of social meaning. Let us go by parts: The elementary chain of communication We begin with the idea that a text of an empirical study of the attribution of meaning in social science only begins to exist as a communicative fact when the research data (previously planned, obviously) is collected and processed. When this data is analyzed and when the work is published, or somehow becomes public, it can then be accessed by a reader. This is the foundation, where the elementary communicative fact can be outlined from and put into practice; or to put it another way, the study in question is not only read by any reader, but more than this, it can be commented by a specialized reader who decides to write another article to criticize the study in question etc., which gives way to an infinite number of semiotic processes (VERON, 1980)