“I really want to work on a topic”: argumentative strategies in a Brazilian TV program

Abstract

In this article, we intend to analyze argumentative processes in a Brazilian TV program called Conexões Urbanas, recovered by the cable TV channel Mutishow between 2008 and 2015. We investigated the correlation between the types of social actors interviewed and the types of arguments present in their speech during the program. We also analyzed the role of the program’s topics in the configuration of the audience. The analysis shows that there is a predominance of certain types of arguments in the speech of certain types of social actors. In other words, the program’s argumentative structure can be correlated to the social status of the participants. Finally, we observed that the topics and the argumentative strategies analyzed configure different audiences for each one of the episodes.