A quem interessa preservar? Uma análise das faces e da polidez linguística em notícias do MST

Abstract

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) is a social movement inspired by the Marxist doctrine, which aims, as its main goal, agrarian reform. From its official creation in the 1970s to the present days, such movement acts as a resistance cell to the conservative and hegemonic discourse that is linked to it by the State and by the mainstream media. Based on the studies on Politeness Theory, in line with the studies of Pragmatics, this article aims to investigate how the media uses linguistic politeness to mitigate face-threatening acts to the MST. From the strategies pointed out by Brown and Levinson (1983), Leech (2005) and Goffman (2011/1967), we reflect on news texts in order to find out what strategies have been adopted by the journalists. By analyzing two pieces of news published by the G1 portal concerning an occupation carried out by the MST, it was possible to verify that the media, from its hegemonic and socially consolidated place, designs discursive strategies that try to delegitimize the movement, bringing in its discourse negative appreciations which criminalize the movement legally, thus generating a threat to the face and defiling the discursive image of the movement.