Modalização e estratégias de produção de efeitos de verdade em artigos acadêmicos da área da linguística

Abstract

Based on the assumption that scientific knowledge, although verifiable, is fallible, we can view the results and conclusions evidenced by scientific practices only as potential provisional truths. However, even though they are not carriers of definitive truths, scientific texts are often used as validators in other texts. It is due to this particularity that the interest of our research arises: to analyze how a discourse used as a guarantee by other discourses is organized in order to produce credibility and evidence, in order to be recognized as a source of truth. For this analysis, we selected a corpus of ten scientific articles: seven from “Revista de Estudos da Linguagem” and three from “Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada”, both from Belo Horizonte. When examining the articles, we did not seek to verify whether the information presented was true or false, nor whether the logical steps of science were well followed, but we sought to analyze which discursive strategies were used to create a real effect. In addition, we seek to verify whether there is a regularity of these discursive strategies in the analyzed articles in the area of Linguistics. Therefore, under the Discourse Analysis bias - in particular, the Semiolinguistic Theory - and the Argumentation studies, we analyzed the selected articles, mainly highlighting aspects related to the enunciative strategies (the presentation of the enunciator; the management of dialogism and modalization) and argumentative strategies (arguments based on the structure of the real: argument from authority, argument by the causal link; the links that underlie the structure of the real: argument by example or illustration and the typical elements of scientific texts: scientific writing and the use of graphs, charts, and tables). From this analysis, it was possible to evidence a pattern in the writing of the analyzed articles. Although all texts analyzed are in the area of Linguistics, the results should be understood only as patterns and trends in academic-scientific writing in the area, not as specific or typical of it. Even obeying several general scientific precepts, typical of scientific discourse, some particularities may not be so noticeable in other areas of knowledge: the discursive presence of the researcher; the recurrence of long and complex periods; the presence of evaluative and epistemic modalities of belief. Such results enable us to acknowledge the influence of scientific communities in scientific practice.