A retórica da polidez e dos palavrões nas redes sociais: uma abordagem por interfaces

Abstract

In this paper, an interdisciplinary perspective of linguistic rhetoric has been proposed, predominantly pragmatic-inferential, the form has effect on the content, through discussion of politeness and cursing, using natural and digital dialogue, taken from social networking sites (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter), for illustration. Since both inferential processes, natural dialogue, politeness, swearing and social networking sites have heteromorphic elements, they are complex problems, hard to be treated in a disciplinary way and, therefore, to be argued that interdisciplinary approaches are more interesting. It was assumed, therefore, being the Metatheory of Interfaces (CAMPOS, 2004a, 2007a, 2007d), the external interfaces are between Linguistics, Cognition, Communication and Computing (with respect to the Web), while the interior is among morphology, syntax, lexicology, semantics and pragmatics. This study aimed to: i. demonstrate the importance of internal and external interfaces consistent for the study of social networks on the Internet, ii. describe politeness present in social networks via the inferential perspective (GRICE, 1991; LEVINSON, 2000; SPERBER & WILSON, 1995). iii. to illustrate the expressiveness of bad words through a pragmatic perspective of rhetoric, and iv. emphasize its value in interdisciplinary research ― for example, the link between language and emotion. Considering the importance pointed out by Pinker (2008) and others to study the "language as a window into human nature," it is argued that due to the location of common language and conscious thought to be concentrated in the neocortex, also linguistic politeness, being the result of rationalization (BROWN and LEVINSON, 1987; ESCANDELL-VIDAL, 1995), is in the same region. However, the taboo words appear in the limbic system (PINKER, 2008), thus presenting a more direct link with emotions and hence greater effectiveness in the expression of these. Given this difference and considering the principle of non-trivial connectivity (COSTA, in press), politeness and bad words were treated as a counterpoint and addressed predominantly in a perspective pragmatic-inferential, because if the semantics value is relatively the same, the pragmatic weight varies according to, for example, the intention and form. We chose to use dialogue taken from social networking sites because they have the possibility of huge corpus analysis, in which interactions are spontaneous. It has been corroborated that the rhetorical value of politeness and bad words is linked to the emotional aspect (PINKER, 2008; JAY, 2009).