Depoimento dos alcoólicos anônimos: um estudo do gênero textual

Abstract

Our research aims to describe the rheorical organisation of deposition gender used in verbal interactions of an on-line anonymous group. This group functions through a list of discussion entitled aa-soberness. The approach which has benn give to the theme is based on theoretical presuppositions of Gender Analysis, particulary John M. Swales’ theoretical contributions (1990). The corpus, constituded by 60 depositions collected from April to October in 1999, was submitted to an exhausting survey whose objective consisted in describing similarities and regularities of rhetorical distribution of units and sub-units of gender information. As a result, we have concluded: a) gender deposition is a form of self-accounting around theme of alcoholism, which is common to the deponents and their interlocutors and which has as nuclear goal the exchange of experiences among alcoholics; b) the gender owns three basic rhetorical units distributed in nine sub-units: rhetorical unit 1 – establishing contact and identification; sub-unit 1.1 – greeting the group members; 1.2 – introducing the deponent; sub-unit 1.3. – thanking for the drinking consumption control; rhetorical unit 2 – comparing experiences before and after his/her membership in anonymouns alcoholic brotherhood; sub-unit 2.1. – making reference to another group message which has brought about the deposition in question; sub-unit 2.2. – accounting experiences about alcoholism; sub-unit 2.3. – commenting the reclaiming after entrance in anonymous alcoholic brotherhood; rhetorical unit 3 – closing the deposition; sub unit 3.1. – saying goodbye to the interlocutors; sub-unit 3.2. – wishing 24 hours of soberness; sub-unit 3.3. – thanking for the attention paid by the group members; sub-unit 3.4. – signing up; c) the frontiers between the beginning and of deposition sub-units are clear-cut through speech acts to which they are subjacent; d) the conduction of information distribution in the gender dovetails to the purposes and principles (the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions) of Anonymous Alcoholic reclaiming program, shaping the deposition gender as a space in which only one alcoholic can make an utterance.