Discursive argumentation in microstories

a teaching proposal

Abstract

Microstories are texts that stand out for their synthesis and the absence of a development considered classic according to Aristotelian rhetoric or according to the norms of textual production. In view of this peculiarity, the objective of this article is to discuss the argument from a discursive perspective. To fulfill this proposal, some microstories were selected from the work The hundred smallest Brazilian tales of the 21st century (2004), organized by Marcelino Freire: “The Bible (special features)” by Antonio Prata; “Duels” by Flávio Carneiro; “But Rio is still beautiful” by Antônio Torres. The selected examples are analyzed considering the communicative proposal as a discursive genre and the possibilities of reconstruction that explain the argument suggested in the story. Structural fragmentation invites the reader to reconstruct the narrative scene based on their previous knowledge and their place in the social context. Thus, the multiplicity of interpretation mobilizes the narrative and argumentative articulators of each reader/enunciator/writer, putting into operation the dialogical discursive process in the theoretical-methodological perspective of Dialogical Discourse Analysis (Bakhtin, 2016); Volóshinov (2017, 2019) and authors who deal with argumentation, such as Amossy (2008); (2011); Maingueneau (2006, 2008). Because they are short and fragmented texts, they allow for classroom work, mobilizing students' creativity by reworking the narrative with cohesion and coherence, exercising the living language, as Bakhtin (2013) proposes.