A progressão temática em Língua Portuguesa: uma análise de notícias sobre a operação Lava Jato no jornal Folha de São Paulo

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the manifestation of the Theme in news that deal with the Lava Jato operation, with the purpose of identifying the types of participants that occur most frequently as the starting point of the prayer and the types of thematic strategies that predominate in the analyzed news. Our theoretical reference is based on the theoretical-methodological perspective of the Systemic-Functional Grammar of Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) and on the Markeness Principle of Givón (1990, 1995). Although they constitute distinct theoretical proposals, such perspectives are not exclusive; on the contrary, they are complementary in concerning to the objectives of this work, which seeks to investigate the theme as a textual-discursive strategy in the construction of the argumentative orientation of the text, considering the motivated correlation between cognitive, textual-discursive and structural factors. Methodologically, ten news on the operation Car Wash were analyzed, extracted from the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, which were published between May 2016 and June 2017. The results indicate (a) the dominance of the human entities “investigated” and “judge”, as a point of starting from the sentence in the texts analyzed, revealing how the author of the text wishes to guide the interpretation of the reader / listener on the operation Car Wash and (b) the linear thematization as the type of information organization most common in the investigated news.