A construção argumentativa no gênero discursivo do domínio jurídico: arguição de descumprimento de preceito fundamental 54-8

Abstract

This research is a study in which we propose to analyze the language in use in the legal field. Our theoretical framework was semiolinguistics, from the thought of the French linguist Patrick Charaudeau, which proposes a model for analyzing the linguistic phenomenon based on three levels: situational, discursive and semiolinguistics. Based on the understanding that language is an action that involves the participation of individuals who interact socially, and from this interaction senses are produced, we focus on understanding the situational, discursive and textual issues involved in the production of speech in the legal field. A text from a corpus of a lawsuit was elected in which the Federal Supreme Court established a new paradigm for the Brazilian law system for pregnancies of anencephalic fetus. It is the genre Accusation of Breach of Fundamental Precept 54-8, in which the announcer attorney, supporting that therapeutic anticipation of delivery of anencephalic fetus is not an abortion, opposes to the dominant discourse enshrined by the Brazilian criminal law concerning the crime of abortion. The accession of the State Court of Law involved a proposal, on the part of the announcer attorney for the construction of the reference expression birth anticipation, which opposes to the idea of termination of pregnancy under Brazilian criminal law (Article 124, 126, caput and 128, beginning I and II) for pregnancies of anencephalic fetuses. Our interest, therefore, fell on the underlying linguistic production aspects, which can only be produced by the entanglement among the levels that tells us Charaudeau. At the situational level, it was our interest to verify the relevant issues related to the contract of communication and speech design; in the discursive, the argumentative organization, typical of legal texts, and in semiolinguistics, the elements present in the textual level, like the role of anaphora, of the argumentative and modal operators, all in cooperation with the text to produce the senses.