Posicionamentos e categorizações: mecanismos retóricos para apresentação/sustentação de pontos de vista em situações de conflito

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the rhetorical mechanisms used by participants of a conflict situation in an institutional context to negotiate points of view and to attribute /be exempt from responsibility for the troublesome event. From the perspective of Interactional linguistics (COUPER-KULEN & SELTING, 2001), I based the analysis on the Positioning Theory (LANGENHOVE & HARRÉ, 1999) and on the Membership Categorization Analysis (SACKS, 1972) and used as corpus conciliation hearings held in PROCON, a consumer protection agency. I identified, first of all, how the consumer is positioned in the Consumer Defense Code (CDC) to then analyze if the positions provides by CDC guided the participants actions and how the positioning and categorization processes contributed to the management of divergent points of view and the attribution of responsibility. The analisys showed that the participants were oriented towards the positions provided by the CDC and made their positionings by projecting self and other images that acted as a rhetorical tool which worked to legitimize their own points of view and undermine the others’, attributing responsibility to the other and exempting the responsibility casted upon themselves. The categorization process also worked as a rhetorical tool for the process of argumentation, because the categorical choices of the participants were based on what they wanted to communicate to defend their arguments and to reject the other arguments.