O uso de ameaças como estratégia argumentativa em audiências do PROCON

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of threats in the conflict context, more specifically, in conciliation hearings of PROCON. These hearings are characterized by the attempt to formulate an agreement between consumer (complainant) and supplier of goods or services (defendant) and are mediated by a representative of the institution (conciliator). In this institutional situation, the fact that the complainant and the defendant have different positions on the complaint generates a clash of ideas in which each participant tries to support his point of view by means of arguments. For analysis, we selected five audiences entitled: Ok vehicles, Rui Pedreiro, Banco Previdência, Banco Sul and Brasimac, these were recorded in audio and transcribed according to the conventions of the Conversation Analysis. All the hearings belong to the data of the project "The role of the evaluation in the argumentation in conflict situations", coordinated by Drª. Amitza Torres Vieira at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. Based on the classical studies of Argumentation (Aristotle, 1978, Toulmin, 1958, Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1996 [1958] and GARCIA, 1978) and also in inter-disciplinary studies (SCHIFFRIN, 1987; GILLE, 2000; VIEIRA, 2003; BARLETTA, 2014), this study sought to investigate the use of threats for argumentative purposes in institutional contexts. In order to analyze the threats, we use as a theoretical contribution the claims of Salgueiro (2010) and Wales (2015). The analysis of the present study is qualitative and interpretive (DENZIN and LINCOLN, 2006), based on real speech data, transcribed according to the conventions of the Jefferson‘s model. The results show that when each part sustains its point of view and does not have willingness to formulate the agreement, the threat can be used as an argumentative resource in order to resolve the conflict. Although threats are produced with the intention of persuading, they are only accepted when the interlocutor evaluates its content as harmful. Moreover, the type of threat produced also interferes in its acceptance.