Responsabilidade enunciativa no gênero jurídico contestação

Abstract

Various fields of discourse, including legal discourse, make use of a variety of discursive, textual genres that can become objects of analysis at the interface between Language and Law. Within these legal genres, in this thesis, our general objective is to investigate the Defense Statement, regarding Commitment. Our specific objectives are to identify, describe, analyze and interpret, the steps, “Preliminaries” and “Merits”, which refer to the procedural and material part of the argument of the Defense, observing: i) the composition and sequential structure; ii) the points of view held by the first speaker-enunciator (S1/E1) and second speakers (s2); iii) the linguistic marks that point to assuming Commitment and/or a mediating role. The study of this genre is relevant, as it is an essential genre in civil lawsuits, and presents distinct characteristics advising on legislative mandates, and practical requirements as well. We opt to analyze these steps because they form the nucleus of the narration and exposition of the arguments, the use of the previously mentioned discourse, and therefore, the contain other voices (plaintiffs, legal authors, legislators, jurists), enabling, thus, the study of the textual marks that evidence Commitment. The research is characterized as qualitative, bibliographic, interpretive research. The corpus is comprised of 8 (eight) Defense Statements, produced by different lawyers, which were protocoled at the 2nd Special Civil Court of the South Side in the District of Natal-RN, from 2013 to 2014. The Defenses analyzed relate to consumer rights. The theoretical framework of our study is based on the Textual Discourse Analysis (TDA), developed by Adam (2011), who analyzes the (con)textual production of meaning, through the analysis of authentic texts. This perspective is based on Textual Linguistics (TL) and Enunciative Linguistics (EL). Our perspective on Point of View (POV), is based on the studies of Rabatel (2008, 2008a, 2009, 2015, 2015a), and the framework for mediation is based on Guentchéva (1994, 1996, 2011, 2014), which forms our basic notions for examining Commitment. Regarding the legal discourse, we focus on studies by Rodrigues, Passeggi and Silva Neto (2014), Rodrigues (2016b, 2016c), Rodrigues e Passeggi (2016), Lourenço (2008, 2015), Pinto (2010), Gomes (2014), Tullio (2012), Palaia (2010), Cabral (2016), among others. We selected two categories of analysis that, according to Adam (2011), characterize the degree of the ER of the propositional enunciations, materially in the text: modalities, which are determinants of the speakers, the enunciators and the points of view. Similarly, the indication of mediator profiles, through the linguistic marks that point to not assuming Commitment. The research data analysis shows that in the Defense Statement, as a discursive textual genre, the argument sequence predominates, since, besides being a prototypical mark of legal discourse, the producer of the text, on assuming ER and using the POV of other enunciators, influences and establishes the direction of the argument in the text. Regarding the mediating profile, we observe that the use of legal sources functions as a strategy of what is said by the speaker-enunciator (S1/E1) to assign the disengagement in relation to the propositional content of his or her speech. In this sense, the Defense presents two distinct points of view (perpetrator and defendant), exposing the adherence of the defendant to a point of view that is in opposition to the perpetrator. This occurs, mainly, in the sections “Preliminaries” and “Merits”, textual zones that point to, on the one hand, enunciators as responsible for the propositional content enunciated, and on the other hand, enunciators that do not engage with respect to the propositional content enunciated.