The agreement that never gets old: discursive-pragmatic analysis of the verbal polemics in opinion articles about the (new) orthographic agreement (from 1990)

Abstract

The Orthographic Agreement of 1990 (hereinafter AO90), although it’s mandatory in Portugal in 2015, remains, nowadays, a fertile topic for opinion texts. Therefore, the present work aims to analyze the discursive construction of verbal polemics in three opinion texts about the AO90, drawing on the perspectives of Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, and Argumentation Studies. Based on the data collected, it was possible to conclude, in general terms, that the authors of these texts do not wield linguistic arguments about the document in question, but rather organize the argumentative framework with the primary goal of discrediting their opponent, mobilizing various strategies of verbal aggression to attack the OTHER's face, such as ad hominem and ad personam arguments.