Estrutura retórica do texto e a articulação de orações no artigo de opinião: uma abordagem funcionalista

Abstract

The present study looks into opinion articles in order to identify the presence of a rhetorical structure which characterizes them as opinion article genres, by using the Functional-Linguistic Theory, which focuses on language in use. As a resource, the research uses the Rhetorical Structural Theory (RST), descriptive theory, advocated by West Coast America linguists such as Mann, Thompson and Matthiessen, to name a few. Our main purpose was to identify a structure that characterizes opinion articles. In addition to the RST, we also base the present research on the Functional Linguistics Theory, within the Systemic-Functional Model created by Hallyday (1985-2004). Other aspects addressed were the Traditional Grammar proposals for clause classification and the difficulties found in this type of analysis when we take the language in use into consideration. The research corpus used is made up of four opinion articles - two from Veja magazine, and the others from Carta Capital magazine. The articles encompass a variety of themes, ranging from politics to racial prejudice, education, and technology, among others. The texts were separated into major parts macrostructure and minor parts microstructure so as to carry analyses of such kinds of text structures. In spite of being placed within the qualitative framework, a taxonomy of relations was established between the macro and microstructures so as to identify the major occurrences of rhetorical relations, our research main focus. It was evidenced a significant incidence rate of list, contrast and sequence multinuclear relations. For nucleus-satellite relations we observed elaboration, reason, result, condition, and antitheses, among others, which led us to recognize an emphatic characteristic of opinion articles.