Referenciação e argumentação em reportagens sobre a reforma trabalhista

Abstract

The present work analyzes the (re)categorization of referents through defined nominal expressions, by means of news reports from Carta Capital and VEJA magazines regarding the labor reform in Brazil. Those periodicals presented, in their printed and digital weekly editions, Michel Temer’s government proposal, which was elaborated in 2016 and approved in 2017. The periodicals’ approaches were before, during and after the approval of the reform. This research compares how the cohesive chains of certain texts differ from others, depending on their ideology. This study is based on Mondada and Dubois (2003), Marcuschi (2008), Koch (2010) and others, who claim that referring, which is something very common to journalistic genres, means the same as arguing. They believe that objects of the discourse, which are progressively constructed, share certain worldviews and effects of meaning that contribute to the argumentative orientation of the text. According to the above-mentioned authors, there is often a subtle imposition of a point of view by the media, which shares information when it textualizes ideas in specific text genres. In this qualitative analysis, we could list and investigate defined nominal expressions in news reports that are found in different journalistic sources. Those news reports deal with the same theme (labor reform) in two approximated dates. In this study, it was possible to confirm our hypothesis that defined nominal expressions are important to reveal the mechanisms of the argumentative orientation of texts. Moreover, the way they are presented in the journalistic texts can reveal partiality in the description of the facts and international affairs, even when some try to conceal it.