Argumentative orientation and Cognition: Force Dynamics in the debate over the rolezinhos

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the argumentation developed in two articles, published in Folha de S. Paulo, that represent polarized stances about a series of teenage meetings — known as rolezinhos — held in several malls in dozens of Brazilian cities in 2013 and 2014. To do so, we establish a theoretical dialogue between Cognitive Linguistics and Argumentation Studies, that relates the cognitive principle of Force Dynamics (Talmy, 2000) to the structuration of argumentation. We could determine three axes that organize the ideological positions in the articles: the conception of shopping malls as private or public spaces; the importance of the right to property in comparison to the right to manifest; and the view of the rolezinhos as events oriented towards entertainment or social contestation. The first components of each axis are harmonically deployed in the first text (T1) in order to build a conceptualization of danger, whereby the teenagers act as an Antagonist that blocks the tendency of the ‘true costumer’ to buy and have fun in the mall. The second components of each axis are also correlated and structure the argumentation of the second text (T2), which bases itself in a conception that the law should be an Agent which guarantees the tendency of the Agonist ‘young people’ to manifest, since these teenagers are already conceptualized as being blocked by social inequality, and the society is taken as having the duty of including these people.