Tenses and temporalities: Contributions to the description of "comment" as a genre

Authors

  • Antónia Coutinho Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa; Centro de Linguística da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
  • Clara Nunes Correia Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa; Centro de Linguística da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

Abstract

Grammatical tenses contribute to the characterization of temporality that is present in different texts and discourses. This observation is the starting point of the reflection presented in this paper. Thus, based on texts that circulate with the label ‘commentary’, we propose to verify how linguistic marks (used in the different forms and constructions of those texts) contribute to a description of what is (or could be) a commentary. We start with the analysis of texts that are available in the corpus G&T. Comentaand we attempt to characterize the values of grammatical tenses in Portuguese, and the temporal locators that contribute to the construction of temporality in those texts. This approach allows for relating textual genres and types of discourse (Bronckart, 1997). The proposals developed within the scope of Sociodiscursive Interactionism will be followed as a guiding principle. To account in a sustainable way for the values that derive from the various grammatical tenses used in those texts, we will consider the proposals that were developed within the perspective of the Enunciative Formal Theory (Culioli 1995), among others. Based on this framework, it is assumed that the different values characterizing grammatical tenses derive from the interrelation between different grammatical categories such as aspect and modality. The relationships that can be established in the articulation between a micro analysis (centered on forms and constructions) and a macro analysis (which captures the text as a complex whole), will allow us to contribute to a characterization that we consider useful not only for defining properties of texts that are included in the commentary genre, but also for defining the values of grammatical tenses.

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Published

2022-11-23