O papel da impolidez em comentários metadiscursivos em debates eleitorais

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing the role of metadiscursive comments as impoliteness strategy performed by political opponents in two electoral debates. According to Cunha and Braga (2018, p. 171), the metadiscursive comment is “a discourse relation through which the speaker uses a represented segment of speech to comment, by evaluating, information from the discursive memory”. Culpeper (2011a) defines impoliteness as a negative action regarding specific behaviors in certain contexts, which depends on the evaluation of the participants in the interaction. This work had as methodology the classification of the metadiscursive comments according to the type of impoliteness and, then, the categorization according to the impoliteness functions in the light of Culpeper’s approach (2011a; 2011b; 2016). Considering Cunha e Braga (2018), we found that the 102 impolite metadiscursive comments, out of 121, was performed, mostly, with a coercive function. This function was the most recurring owing to the conflicting and polemic nature of the electoral debate and it was used as a form of demerit from the adversary and as a cause of disagreement between the candidates. This demonstrates that metadiscursive comments can be important tools in the facework during electoral debates.