A refutação em introduções de teses de doutorado da área de linguística

Abstract

Considering the argumentative content of academic discourse, the refutation is an indispensable procedure, since the argumentation presupposes disacord, debate and therefore the refutation, which constitutes opposition, disacord, necessary, therefore, for the argumentation. Under an enunciative approach, it is possible to correlate concession/ refutation, since two concession properties can be identified: the idea of opposition between two conclusions (r and non-r); the idea of a hierarchical relation between the contents as arguments for these conclusions. Given the prototypical compositional structure of the refutation (assertion/refuse/justification) and the concession/refutation correlation, we seek, in this research, to identify defining properties of refutation in academic discourse. To that end, we raise the following question: what the refutation manifested in introductions of doctoral theses of the area of linguistics has of peculiar that tells us that the authors construct their texts the way they construct? The corpus consists of eighty introductions of doctoral theses from sixteen postgraduate programs of the area of linguistics. For the data collection, we proceed to a cut, with the selection of the passages constitutive of acts of language of refutation, which are materialized through the articulation of the negative and argumentative elements. We assume the theoretical postulates of Moeschler (1982), Moeschler and Spengler (1982) and Ducrot (1981, 1987). For the analysis, we define the following categories: prototypical compositional structure, marks of refuse and effects of sense. We apply a prototypical model, organized from the studies of Moeschler (1982) and Moeschler and Spengler (1982), with elements linkers and ratifiers of refutation. We also identify oppositional marks and voices that emerge from refutative strategies to analyze the effects of sense of such voices through linguistic polyphony (DUCROT, 1987). The results confirm the assertion/refuse/justification structure, but they also point to a configuration with elements that show solidarity in a constant exercise of chaining and ratifying of the refutation. Denial of prior assertion manifests itself from the combination of different linguistic forms, however, marks that result in concessive strategies are more frequently used. The polyphonic analysis of the effects of sense allows the identification of the enunciators placed on the scene by the speaker, as well as the positioning of the speaker in front of these enunciators.