Movimentos argumentativos em audiências preliminares no Juizado Especial Criminal

Abstract

The Special Criminal Court (JECrim) is an organ of the judiciary responsible for judging criminal misdemeanors and crimes of lesser offensive potential whose penalties do not exceed two years in prison. The preliminary hearing takes place before the complaint is filed and is characterized by the attempt to archive the case and, consequently, reduce the overload of processes at JECrim (MIRANDA, 2019; MACHADO 2023). Therefore, this speech-ininteraction event is eminently argumentative, and, depending on the conciliator's power of persuasion, the archiving proposal will be successful or not. Considering the specificities of this situational context, the objectives of this work are to map the argumentative movements (cf. GILLE, 2001) presented by participants in three hearings at JECrim in a city in Minas Gerais; investigate the role of argumentation in fulfilling the institutional mandate (MAYNARD, 1984) and analyze the structure and content of supporting arguments. The data, recorded in audio and transcribed according to the convention of conversation analysts (SACKS, SCHEGLOFF and JEFFERSON, 1974), belong to the collection of the CNPq Research Group “Language Practices in Legal Contexts”. The research is qualitative and interpretative (DENZIN and LINCOLN, 2005) and is inserted in the subarea of Applied Linguistics of Professions (SARANGI, 2005). To analyze the argumentation, we combined the three components proposed by Schiffrin (1987) with the argumentative movements predicted by Gille (2001). Furthermore, we resorted to the literature on types of argument (PERELMAN EOLBRECHTS - TYTECA, 1958; GARCIA, 1978; BILLIG, 1987) and narrative studies (LABOV, 1972; BAMBERG AND GEORGAKOPOULOU, 2008). We also made use of the argumentation models developed by Vieira (2003, 2007). The results of the study show, in the JECrim hearings, the use of argumentative movements already foreseen by Gille (2001) and Vieira (2003, 2007), but they reveal the emergence of a specific MA in this context, namely PECON. Furthermore, we found that the conciliator pursues the fulfillment of its institutional goal, sometimes arguing in favor of archiving, sometimes defending the non-opening of future processes. Depending on the participants' reaction, the argument is brief or gradually constructed in several turns of speech, through the insertion of analogies, arguments from authority, legal evidence, evidence, narratives, common sense, and syllogism.