THE DISCURSIVE GENRE DEBATE ON STAGE: ARGUMENTATION, IDEOLOGYAND INTERACTION IN PORTUGUESE CLASSES

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This study aims to investigate three main elements (social interaction, argumentation and ideology) in a study of the discursive genre debate, in the light of the theoretical postulates of Mikhail Bakhtin (2003, 2006). According to this author´s perspective, language is ideological and dialogical by nature, and enunciation (verbal interaction between sociohistorical subjects) updates linguistic system through discursive genres. Our goals are: 1. discuss the fundamental characteristics of this genre, based on the postulates of Bakhtin (2003), particularly those related to the three pillars of the discursive genre: compositional structure, thematic content and style; 2. describe the interactional context in which the genre was produced; 3. investigate how the students, participants in the study, used both the language and rhetorical strategies to produce their arguments, during the activity; 4. analyze how ideologies were materialized in the proposed debate. In order to achieve our goals, we conducted, in Portuguese classes, a public regimented deliberation debate, within a simulated jury, involving thirty-three participants, divided as follows: a Judge, a Justice Officer, a Children’s Protective Services worker, six couples wishing to adopt an abandoned child, six lawyers, seven jurors and five assistant team members. The debate, which aimed to choose the best couple for this adoption, was made possible by a didactic sequence, suggested by Dolz and Schneuwly (2011a; 2011b) and collaborators, and recorded on audio and video for transcription purposes. A week after the debate, we interviewed the six students who were the lawyers (the debaters), in order to confirm some information related to the arguments used by them in the activity. Our data reveals the following compositional structure of the debate conducted: Judge's entry, Opening of the debate (the charge, selection of the Jury, and instructions), six shifts of argumentation (each one composed of opening arguments, reply and rejoinder), deliberation and verdict. The thematic content was highly controversial, due to the discursive topics present in the profiles of the couples (previously developed), which brought up ideologies, identity issues and discourses socially and historically built, common in that community, especially evangelical Christian values. In the analysis of the style, we investigated the interruption, hesitation and discursive markers, phenomena that gave the debate a syntax of the spoken text, motivated by concrete enunciative demands. The analysis of correction and repetition, which are not typical of orality, revealed, however, particularities in this sphere, such as the functions of promoting interaction, collaborating with the interlocutor's understanding, reiterating the rules of the game, intensifying ideas, serving also as important argumentative strategies. The analysis of argumentative operators and the argumentative functions of two phenomena of the referential process (anaphoric recategorization and anaphoric encapsulation) revealed that language is capable of producing argumentation. Rhetoric was also used to build argumentation, showing three important functions of persuasion: logical function, affective function and aesthetic function. We also observed the use of three types of arguments of The New Rhetoric: quasi-logical arguments, appeals to reality and arguments that establish the real. This research proves that no word is neutral. On the contrary, as individuals are sociohistorically constituted, their discourses are dialogical, crossed by ideology and by the concrete enunciative act.