Funções discursivas dos processos referenciais de encapsulamento em artigos de opinião

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to analyze the discursive functions of the referential encapsulation processes in opinion pieces according to the theoretical approach of referentiation (MONDADA, 1994; MONDADA; DUBOIS, [1995] 2003). For that we proposed a (re)discussion of the formal and functional criteria that guide the definition and the analysis of the encapsulation phenomenon based on the researches by authors such as Francis ([1994] 2003), Conte ([1996] 2003), Apothéloz and Chanet ([1997] 2003) and Consten; Knees and Schwarz-Friesel (2007), who tend to give a formal treatment to the anaphoric encapsulation processes. Thus, we aligned these works with the theoretical postulates that are present in more recent studies that deal with this theme, such as the works by Ciulla and Silva (2008), Silva (2013), Alves (2015) among others. This theoretical construct was essential because it enabled us not only to verify the functioning of the anaphoric encapsulation in the texts that integrate the corpus of this dissertation, but also to study the relation between these processes of reference and the textual genre opinion piece, as well as to relate the different types of encapsulation to the attitude markers of the speaker in their text (HYLAND, 2005). Based on these objectives, we adopted a corpus consisting in 40 opinion pieces about the tv shows aired in the Brazilian television that were collected between the years of 2015 and 2016. Based on the qualitative analysis of the corpus, it was found that the discursive functions of the anaphoric encapsulation processes and of the referential encapsulation introductions are linked to two macrofunctions: (i) metadiscursive macrofunction, which integrates the following fuctions: a) the evaluative function; b) the introduction and encapsulation of referents; c) the function of hypostasizing pragmatic-discursive units; (ii) organizing macrofunction, which envolves: a) glossing function; b) enumerative function; c) the function of promoting topical organization. Moreover, it was also possible to verify that the encapsulation referential processes and the opinion piece genre are interinfluenced, which is probably due to the preference of the encapsulations for texts where there is a predominance of the argumentative sequence. Finally, this work also contributes with na important theoretical reflection on the importante of the encapsulations based on works published throughout the years by focusin on discoursive aspects and possible relations with text-discursive traits.