Modalidade deôntica e discurso midiático: uma análise baseada na Gramática Discursivo-Funcional

Abstract

This work aims at analyzing the deontic modality in the media discourse under the functionalist approach, seeking to integrate the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic components in the analysis, which implies the study of language in its effective usage. Thus, we sought to establish relations among the elements which compose the several levels based on the model proposed by Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008), in the attempt to observe and describe the means through which the effects of sub/objectivity in relation to the discursive construction transmitted on the radio and on television are produced. For so, we utilized the corpus REDIP - “Portuguese International Broadcast Network: radio, television and press”, which was developed by the Theoretical and Computational Linguistics Institute (ILTEC), situated in Portugal. The analysis of the data obtained in relation to the media discourse revealed that the establishment of the deontic values occurred more frequently on the television media, usually associated to the theme “opinion”, identified as elements of the contextual component. Among the deontic values, we observed the majority of obligation, as the prototype of this category. In relation to the source and to the deontic target, we noticed a tendency in the usage of the source from the enunciating type and also of a “third-absent” target. This means that the speaker puts him/herself, explicitly or implicitly in the construction of its enunciation, which confers the category in issue an effect of subjectivity. However, with respect to the predominance of the type of target "third-absent”, we noticed a distancing effect that accomplishes the purpose of avoiding confrontation with any agent that could be specified. Finally, we verified that the auxiliary modals were the most frequent expressions in the corpus and that the means of expression are directly related to the type of broadcast. In the end, we established a typological proposal which takes into consideration the deontic source and the target, having in mind the (performative/descriptive) usage of the deontic modals.