The study investigates the sense effects that are produced within the discourse of Brazilian legislation considering linguistic and discursive structures in nomination forms of persons with disability. For the purpose of analysis, the discursive corpus was built from the Brazilian constitutions and from national education laws (Diretrizes da Educação). The theoretical approach is affiliated to the French approach of Discourse Analysis initiated by Michel Pêcheux in the sixties. Discourse Analysis works from the conception that the subject is constituted not as a psychological subject but by submitting to a language process and to ideology. The notion of repetition/renewal is employed at the discursive level because it considers the ideological and sociohistorical conditions of discourse production. The sense effects of this notion are related to inter-discourse of discursive formation. Repetition/renewal is organized but not limited to the inter-discursive level; repetition can produce discursive renewal or it can replicate earlier discourse. Discourse that produces sense for/by enunciators is not original, it replicates founding discourse. Thus, the subject that enunciates such discourse is not the original author and his is not the only or even the best way to enunciate it, even though the subject might have such an illusion. The formulations that nominate the subject with disability in legislative discourse can produce both the same and the different, one and another are related to the conditions of discourse production, of the sense and of the subject.
deficient subject; sense effects; repetition/renewal; legislation; special education