Textualization strategies in the controversy over agricultural crops in Brazil

Abstract

In this article, we analyze some forms of textualization of the controversial modality in the debate, more and more intense in Brazil, regarding two agricultural divergent models: agroecology and agribusiness. The controversial modality is one of the argumentative modalities pointed out by Ruth Amossy in her writings about the argumentation in the discourse. The categories of analysis choosed by the author to study argumentativity in discourse are mostly linguistic (lexical terms, syntactic constructions, connectors, etc.) and pragmatic (implicit, presupposed and implied). Our intention is to propose here that the analysis of argumentation in the discourse also uses categories of textual order for the study of argumentativity and, more specifically, the controversial modality. Thus, we present the genre of discourse and intertextuality as a possible textual criteria to be mobilized for the analysis of argumentativeness in interactions that participate in the contemporary controversial debate around the two agricultural cultures mentioned above. From the methodological point of view, we chose to analyze a text, belonging to the genre charge, which is part of the controversy on screen. Our analyzes lead us to: i) corroborate the thesis that the option for a given gender consists of a strategy of persuasion and ii) confirm the hypothesis that it is possible for a text without an argumentative purpose to participate actively in a controversy, as long as it is seen from the prism of intertextual relations to which he alludes. Besides these, other textualisation criteria can be mobilized for an analysis of controversial argumentativeness.