A evidencialidade em textos acadêmicos de grau do português brasileiro contemporâneo

Abstract

Evidentiality is a linguistic category related to the source of informations and also to strategies of commitment degrees of the author with these informations. With the intent of investigating the manifestation of that category in the construction of academic degree works in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, this research aims to: a) re-discuss the status of evidentiality as a linguistic category; b) analyze the relations between modality and evidentiality; c) examine the strategies employed in the use of evidentiality marks in the monographs, dissertations and theses; d) identify, describe and analyze the evidential linguistic marks in the scientific works in focus; e) relate the use of evidentials to strategies for compromise effect in textual construction. By identifying and interpreting the evidential marks in the construction of academic texts, this research seeks to contribute to express explicitly the meaning effects linked to the transmitting of information strategically, since these marks are used for diverse purposes, such as resorting to the so-called "authority argument”, attenuation of liability in relation to what is said, modalization in the continuum between certainty and non-certainty, suggesting a degree of commitment in relation to the truth of the proposition, also a critical positioning in relation to the proposition. This analysis, guided by functionalist assumptions, has a theoretical dimension, aimed at re-discussion of the conceptual boundaries between modality and evidentiality categories, and an analytical dimension, which, in constant dialogue with the theory, researches in a qualitative and quantitative way the use of evidentiality marks in monographs, dissertations and theses. The choice of these text genres for the corpus constitution is justified by the assumption that they present a greater amount of information whose source is not the author himself, conditioning the use of evidentiality marks in the observable relationship with the degree of commitment of the author related to the information conveyed. The acquisition of 1500 instances for this research came true from the organization of a corpus consisting of thirty academic degree (ten monographs, ten dissertations and ten theses), which was used as a cut-off for analysis: introduction, one chapter of theoretical discussions and conclusion. Data were analyzed according to these categories: the type of mark evidential (lexical or grammar item – verb, noun, adjective, adverb, preposition; metadiscursive statement, simple juxtaposition, quotatives marks of ABNT) and the position of such mark in relation to source (before, between, after); b) the types of concepts characteristic of the evidential semantics are described, the source of information (the utterer, defined external source, undefined external source, common domain); the evidential access (direct, less direct, undirect); the nature of evidential information (subjective, experiential, inferential, reported); c) the pragmatical and discursive aspects, that is, the effects of meaning associated with the construction of the arguments in that concerns to the expression of high, medium or low commitment to what is being reported. In three genres of academic degree, the low commitment was more frequent and the differences between high and low commitment is nearly the same in these genres. Regarding to semantic aspects, the external, indirect and reported source was the most frequent, explicit by dicendi verbs, that appear between the source and the contend asserted.