Argumentative strategies in times of pandemic: construction of meanings in Veja magazine covers

Abstract

Based on the theoretical contributions of the Theory of Argumentation in Language (TAL) in its most recent phase the Theory of Semantic Blocks (TBS), this study aims to analyze the meanings constructed discursively in texts of Veja magazine covers, through semantic blocks expressed by argumentative sequences of the type DC (donc) or PT (pourtant). In order to carry out the corpus analysis, we rely on the Theory of Argumentation in Language (TAL) developed by Oswald Ducrot and collaborators (Anscombre & Ducrot, 1994, Carel & Ducrot, 1999, 2005, Ducrot, 1988, 2002), especially with regard to the current phase developed by Marion Carel (Carel & Ducrot, 1999, 2005, Carel & Gomes, 2019), the Theory of Semantic Blocks (TBS). This theory is based on the premise that the meaning of a linguistic entity is constituted by certain discourses that the entity evokes, denominated argumentative sequences united by a connector in DC (donc) or PT (pourtant). This study is characterized as exploratory and bibliographic with a qualitative approach. The selected corpus consists of two covers of the Veja magazine published during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of the analysis allowed to observe that TAL, in its current version TBS, is effective in contributing to interpret an enunciation with several possible meanings and not always explicit, since the argumentative meaning is constructed discursively by the formation of semantic blocks.