Mikhail Bakhtin and Rhetoric: a possible and productive dialogue

Abstract

In this paper we propose a dialogue between the ancient rhetoric of Aristotelian tradition and the discourse conception as it was conceived by Mikhail Bakhtin and the Circle, as it can be verified in the rhetorical resonances on Bakhtinian’s work. These resonances occur in different points and also in different degrees: implicitly or explicitly, positively or not. We consider important the comprehension of this question for its contributions to an effective analysis of argumentative discourse and argumentation itself. In fact, we believe the critical commentaries on rhetoric in Bakhtinian’s work may help to understand discourse’s structure and operation, as well as the way sense effects –always evaluative– are produced. Consequently, these comments may help to teach discursive/textual production, one of the basis of democratic citizenship. At first, we present the dialogue between these theories, observing coherences, complementarities and approximations. Then, we analyze the dialogical resonances on the pages of two Brazilian newspapers, Correio Braziliense and Folha de S. Paulo, whose excerpts were argumentatively mentioned in a Law process. According to rhetorical and Bakhtinian lessons, we prove how form is a convincing evaluation of content, in that media texts evaluative intonations show axiological points of view –related to the crime and its trial– admitted by these communication vehicles. Furthermore, the analysis enlightens a tendency to a possible monological sense effect in “journalism and its genres as modern rhetoric”.