As estratégias argumentativas do regime militar em Atos Institucionais

Abstract

With the objective of unveiling the main argumentative strategies used by the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-85) from its 17 Institutional Acts (AIs), this study is based on the Theory of argumentation (PERELMAN; TYTECA, 2005), since the New rhetoric (PERELMAN; TYTECA, 2005), and in the Pecheuxtian Discourse Analysis (PÊCHEUX, 1988; ORLANDI, 2012; COURTINE, 2019; INDURSKY, 2013). From this perspective, the analysis of the corpus is directed to the argumentative dimension of discursive memories (VITALE, 2015), whose mechanisms have the function of provoking adherence to certain sayings. Their results indicate that the military state resorted to the strategy of definition by appoint the removal of President João Goulart of authentic revolution, thus distancing the idea of illegitimate action, besides having used the technique of inclusion of the part in the whole, through which it presents the taking of power as a civil-military movement, and that of causal link when it justifies the action as necessary to save Brazil from communism. The analyses also point to a series of slips of meanings, which proves that the language works in the tension between the same and the different, under the determination of historical procedurally, reflected in the discursive materiality.