"Ferra-se cavalos" - de apassivador a indeterminador: o uso do clítico se como estratégia de desagentivização verbal

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the use of clitic SE in scientific articles as a strategy of impersonalization of discourse, especially in its indeterminate form. The analysis is based on Halliday & Matthiessen's Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) (2004), an approach that understands language as a system shaped by the context of use. Therefore, articles from Corpus de Artigos Acadêmicos do Português Brasileiro (CAPB) (OLIVEIRA; OLIVEIRA; MIRANDA, 2018) were selected. CAPB is a project developed in partnership with the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Federal University of Viçosa. Featuring texts extracted from the SciELO portal (Scientific Electronic Library Online), the corpus is comprised of nine major areas of knowledge, following the platform pattern: Exact and Earth Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, Health Sciences, Agrarian Sciences, Science Applied Social Sciences, Humanities, Linguistics, Literature and Arts and Multidisciplinary. As a research clipping, the area of Biological Sciences was selected to analyze the occurrences of SE. Data processing was done through free software Kitconc© 4.0 (MOREIRA FILHO, 2008). The tool allows to generate words occurrence lines in the texts, as well as the cleaning of the data. All SE occurrences were selected, excluding conjunctions, acronyms, conditionals and Latin expressions. The final corpus presents 3,037 occurrences of clitic SE. Then, a narrower cut was generated: the occurrences of the indeterminate SE with direct transitive verbs, totaling 40 occurrences. After cleaning, the verbal processes which were linked to the clitic were investigated. Revealing its pronominal nature, the postverbal position was the predominant one. In order to make a qualitative analysis, the 40 contexts were analyzed in order to discuss the use of indeterminate SE with direct transitive verbs, use rejected by the Traditional Grammar (TG). In the samples, the lack of agreement between the verbal process and its argument, even if prescribed by the TG, was understood as a transition from the passive SE to the indeterminate. The Systemic-Functional Linguistics was used for analysis regarding this particular use of the clitic, in addition to the production context, the interaction between speakers and the communicative intentions. According to Nunes (1991), there is a very close relationship between the two SE functions. Moreover, as a strategy of verbal disagentivization, the use of middle voice in the concepts proposed by Camacho (2013) is discussed, approximating the corpus samples to this notion. The medial structures indicate a self-caused verbal process in which there is no presence of initiating agent of the event. Furthermore, there is a discussion about the speaker's understanding regarding the use of the SE clitic, comparing TG-oriented use and those deviant from it. With corpus samples, this study proposes a reflection on the SE grammaticalization as impersonalizing particle, even if it occurs in passive sentences, traditionally. The results reveal that the SE occurrences are mainly linked to the presentation of results and data discussion, in addition to the omission of the agent/researcher figure. In these parts of the academic text, the author is expected to move his figure away from the verbal process, since he does not wish to compromise his image in relation to what is presented or discussed. Finally, it is concluded that SE is an important resource, but little studied as a verbal disagentivizer, essential for marking the impersonality of the scientific text. The study also proposes the creation of didactic materials for the scientific article genre teaching based on the use of the SE clitic as text mark.