Strategies of assertion in presidential inaugural addresses: uses of the verb ser (to be) and evaluative predicates

• Grant number: 13/24141-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2014
• End date: January 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Marize Mattos Dall'Aglio Hattnher
• Grantee: Francis Méry de Leão Coutinho
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to investigate how the assertion is built in the presidential inauguration address of Brazil (1984-2011).Understanding the assertion as a categorical affirmation of a proposition that the speaker believes to be true, the main purpose of this research is to investigate the form and the function of the indication of certainty used by the Presidents, who speak from a place of authority, as is the case in a democratic country like Brazil. Given that the affirmative illocutionary force, the indicative mood and the absolute time constitute the basic form of assertion, the clauses construction "to be + evaluative predicate" will be analyzed, looking for pragmatic, semantic and syntactic explanations to the high frequency of these structures in the selected corpus.