O funcionamento dos adjetivos no contexto de uso das charges

Abstract

This thesis proposes to investigate, in the light of Functionalism (GIVÓN, 1995, 2001; TOMASELLO, 1998; NEVES, 2018), the argumentative functioning of adjectives in cartoons, especially the argumentative force of these elements in the different syntactic functions in which they occur, relating syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discursive aspects as recommended by the theory in question. Allied to Functionalism, the approaches of Pragmatics and Argumentation (AUSTIN [1962] 1990; SEARLE, 1979; EEMEREN; GROOTENDORST, 1983; KOCH, [1984] 2002; 2010; 2017; AMOSSY, 2011) of Textual Linguistics (MARCUSCHI, 2002; KOCH, 2004, 2014; CAVALCANTE; CUSTÓDIO FILHO, 2010; CAVALCANTE, 2013) and of Multimodality (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, [1996] 2006) also were used as the theoretical basis in this research. The corpus is composed of 136 cartoons collected from the website Charge Online between July 12th, 2017 and July 15th, 2018, whose themes are politics and soccer. In this total of cartoons were accounted 195 occurrences of adjectives. The results show that, in syntactic contexts (ROCHA LIMA, [1972] 2010; CASTILHO, 2010; NEVES, 2011), 65.7% of adjectives occur in the function of adnominal adjunct, 33.3% as a subject predicate and only 1% of them occur as an object predicate; in the semantic context (BORBA, 1996; CASTILHO, 2010), 54.3% are qualifying adjectives, 43.1% are classifiers and 2.6% of adjectives are deictic; in the pragmatic-discursive context, adjectives act as an important factor of argumentation, because their characteristic in the context of cartoons is to be performative manipulative, insofar as their argumentative functioning in discourse is to contribute to the process of reader’s manipulation, in order to direct their look at another point of view, making him interpret the argumentation put in this textual genre. It was found that the adjectives in subject predicate function are stronger argumentatively (83.1%) compared to the others that occur in the syntactic position of adnominal adjunct (34.4%) or object predicate (0%). It was also found that most of the qualifying adjectives occur in the syntactic function of subject predicate and were used with high argumentative force (84.7%), that most classifiers occur functioning as an adnominal adjunct and have low argumentative force (74, 7%), and that the deictics are in the minority, occurring more frequently as an adnominal adjunct and with a balanced argumentative force (50% low - 50% high). We used pragmatic-argumentative criteria based, mainly on Givón (2001), Koch ([1984] 2002; 2010) and Amossy (2011) combined with other aspects of syntactic, semantic and morphological nature, based on Bastos (1993), Castilho ( 2010), Koch ([1984] 2002; 2017), and of non-verbal nature (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, [1996] 2006) to interpret the argumentative force of adjectives. In addition to the adjectives contributing to the construction of the argumentation in the cartoon, due to their argumentative force, they emerge in the discourse, conveying semantic values associated with the intentions that the cartoonist intends to bring in his text, leading the reader of the cartoon to interpret it and , from there be influenced or not to think according to the message of the cartoon, since the adjectives have underlying and subjective values influencing the transmission of the senses.