O encadeamento argumentativo na teoria da argumentação na língua

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical discussion on the Theory of Argumentation within Language – TAL, such as proposed by Oswald Ducrot and his collaborators. Our main objective is to investigate how the fundamental principles of TAL have been used by authors who deal with the notion of argumentative chaining. Since the publication of "The Argumentation within Language", in 1983, by Anscombre and Ducrot, some TAL basic principles have been modified, with direct consequences to the notion of argumentative chaining. Thus, this paper aims at checking if the authors who have been using TAL principles have followed the relevant modifications to the basic theory. In order to limit the scope of our work to the argumentation field, we have looked at the historical background of the discussions on the topic, from the first uses of the term in the Classic Antiquity ‘myths’ to the postulation of the Theory of Argumentation within Language. On each historical moment of the reflection on argumentation, we checked which principles have influenced Ducrot’s theory. As a corpus for this study, we selected some theoretical books in the areas of Textual Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. Those texts contain references to concepts derived from Ducrot’s theory, which allowed us to observe how concepts such as “argumentative operator” and “polyphony” have been used in these books, and above all to check if such concepts have followed, in these texts, all the theoretical reformulations that mark TAL theory.