AS FORMAS DE POLIDEZ EMPREGADAS EM TRIBUNAIS PARA ATENUAR OS ATOS AMEAÇADORES À FACE DOS INTERLOCUTORES

Abstract

The following paper focuses on analysing the forms of politeness used to mitigate the face-threatening acts of the defender and the prosecutor in forensic settings, in the region of Três Lagoas (MS). The analysis relies on the assumptions of Goffman (1967), who came up with the concept of “face” as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line other assume he has taken during a particular contact. We used inductive reasoning to verify which politeness strategies are the most recurring during a jury trial. The present study builds upon the theoretical basis of the Conversation Analysis and Forensic Linguistics. The research is based, in particular, on the analytical perspectives of Goffman (1967), Brown and Levinson (1987), Marcuschi (2003), Koch (2009), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2006), Coulthard and Johnson (1999) and Coulthard (2007). To build the corpus of the current study, we used audio recordings of the jury trials in the county of Três Lagoas, countryside of Mato Grosso do Sul. The recordings were transcribed according to Preti (2003). The present research makes it possible to show that the forms of politeness used to attenuate the face-threatening acts are tools often employed to strengthen the reasoning of the counterparts engaged in forensic settings.