A gramaticalização do item “mesmo” em práticas textuais jurídicas

Abstract

The present research analyzes the multifunctionality of the item mesmo in real situations of use based on legal textual practices, considering the grammaticalization process as a phenomenon of linguistic change. Thus, in the constitution of the research corpus we considered the Administrative Notebooks published in the Diário da Justiça Eletrônico, of the Judicial Branch of the State of Bahia, with a time difference of approximately ten years (2010-2021), which directs us to a short-term real-time analysis (LABOV, 2008 [1972]). The research objectives are: to identify the uses of the item mesmo documented in the legal textual practices that make up the sample, describing its functionalities according to the different syntactic, semantic and pragmatic behaviors; to describe and analyze linguistic and extralinguistic factors that favor the occurrence of mesmo in innovative (grammaticalized) functionalities in legal textual practices; to indicate which of these functionalities are more or less grammaticalized, according to the probable trajectory(s) of linguistic change that occurred in the path of grammaticalization of the item. As follows, we developed a study based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Sociofunctionalism (TAVARES, 2003; 2013; MAY, 2009; GÖRSKY; TAVARES, 2013; TAVARES; GÖRSKY, 2015; SILVA; OLIVEIRA, 2017; CASTANHEIRA, 2018; TAVARES; DUARTE, 2021), which articulates assumptions of Variationist Sociolinguistics and North American Functionalism focusing on grammaticalization studies (HOPPER, 1991; HOPPER; TRAUGOTT, 2003 [1993]; GONÇALVES et al., 2007; MARTELLOTA, 2011; 2015; BYBEE, 2015; GONÇALVES, 2021), and previous research on the use of the item same in Brazilian Portuguese (AMORIM, 2009; PEREIRA, 2013; OLIVEIRA, 2013; PEREIRA; GÖRSKY, 2016; DANTAS et al., 2018). The analysis of linguistic and extralinguistic factors observable in the legal field provides us with relevant reflections to understand the behavior of the various synchronic functional patterns of the item mesmo and the probable principles and mechanisms acting in the expansion of its functionalities in the analyzed field. To such a degree, we hypothesized that the item mesmo in its path from less grammatical to more grammatical item is undergoing a process of polygrammaticalization (see TRAVAGLIA, 2004; PINTO, 2007). Like so the grammaticalization chains, bipartite in a continuum originating from the semantic matrix of the idem root and in a continuum originating from the semantic matrix of the ipse root, present other bifurcations, depending on the abstracted semantic value and/or the desired functional role in the communicative situation. With regard to the discursive context of the legal textual practices considered in this research, we perceive that the specificities of the socio- communicative situation of the legal field, regarding to sequências discursivas argumentativas and genres of procedural nature and appeal nature, seem to be providing a more accentuated use, mainly, the functional categories of referentiality referência endofórica atributiva and referência anafórica substitutiva, as well as, the more grammaticalized categories that exercise the functionality of inclusão, articulador textual de comparação and articulador textual de concessão. So that, it is possible to understand that the practice of legal texts play an important role in automating the multifunctionality of the item mesmo in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, as well as in the propagation of its more grammaticalized uses.