Banca de DEFESA: KARLA STÉPHANY DE BRITO SILVA

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : KARLA STÉPHANY DE BRITO SILVA
DATE: 30/01/2026
TIME: 15:00
LOCAL: meet.google.com/ova-dtkv-uqf
TITLE:

 

 

 

Accusing and defending: point of view, enunciative responsibility, emotion, and empathy in the construction of argumentation in oral advocacy before the Jury Court in intentional homicides against women

KEY WORDS:

 

 

 

Oral pleading. Jury trial. Emotion. Empathy. Point of View.

PAGES: 381
BIG AREA: Lingüística, Letras e Artes
AREA: Lingüística
SUBÁREA: Teoria e Análise Lingüística
SUMMARY:

Intentional homicide against women, as an extreme manifestation of gender-based violence, is often characterized by the killing of women motivated by hatred, contempt, or a sense of possession. In Brazil, this phenomenon has reached alarming levels, reflecting a persistent culture of inequality, machismo, and the normalization of violence against women. Although legislative measures such as the Maria da Penha Law (Law No. 11.340/2006) and the Feminicide Laws (Laws No. 13.104/2015 and No. 14.994/2024) represent significant advances, homicide rates remain high, indicating the need for more effective actions. Within this context, this doctoral thesis investigates the discourses produced by a public prosecutor, an assistant prosecutor, and public defenders in oral arguments concerning intentional homicides against women, focusing on types of arguments in accordance with the New Rhetoric, textual organization, point of view (POV), enunciative responsibility (ER), emotion, and empathy. The study adopts a qualitative, interpretative, and inductive approach, grounded in Textual Discourse Analysis (TDA) as proposed by Adam (2011, 2022), articulated with the New Rhetoric of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1996), Rabatel’s theory of indirect argumentation (2016b), enunciative theories (Rabatel, 2016a, 2021), theories of emotion (Plantin, 2011; Micheli, 2010; Martineau, 2021), and theories of empathy (Rabatel, 2013). The corpus comprises five oral arguments related to intentional homicide cases against women, representing both prosecution and defense. Case 1 includes one oral argument by the prosecutor and one by a public defender, while Case 2 comprises one oral argument by the prosecutor, one by the assistant prosecutor, and one by a public defender. All oral arguments are publicly available on YouTube, on the official channel of the prosecutor, who appears in both cases. The selection of the corpus followed specific criteria: all cases involve intentional homicide against women (whether legally classified as feminicide or not); the defendant had a prior relationship of trust with the victim; the oral arguments are fully available on YouTube; the complete jury trial sessions are accessible; and the cases received local media coverage. All speeches were transcribed and standardized according to the norms of the UrbanProject (NURC). The findings indicate that the textual organization of the oral arguments follows the classical Aristotelian rhetorical structure—Exordium, Narration, Confirmation, and Peroration—ensuring logical and persuasive coherence. Prosecutorial discourse predominantly advances theses related to combating domestic violence and emphasizing the defendant’s cruelty, often grounded in emotional and empathetic arguments, whereas defense discourse tends to focus on questioning the prosecutor’s moral stance, frequently through arguments that explore doubt, uncertainty, and the defendant’s condition. Regarding point of view, an asserted POV predominates in the Exordium through praise and positive terms aimed at building empathy with jurors and authorities; the Narration is marked by a narrated POV, constructed through past-tense verbs that reconstruct the crime from the perspective of the represented party; the Confirmation returns to an asserted POV through epistemic modalizers, evaluative lexemes, and opinion adverbs; and the Peroration strongly appeals to pathos, employing emotional terms such as “justice,” “pain,” and “suffering,” particularly in the prosecution’s discourse. Concerning enunciative responsibility, the most recurrent markers include first-person pronouns and verbs, deictics, and modalizers, which anchor the point of view and reinforce argumentation. Finally, the analysis reveals the consistent presence of emotional arguments and empathetic resources on both sides, albeit in different forms, highlighting distinct persuasive strategies in the argumentative processes of oral arguments in jury trials.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 349685 - MARIA DAS GRACAS SOARES RODRIGUES
Interno - 349707 - LUIS ALVARO SGADARI PASSEGGI
Externo ao Programa - 1168647 - MARIO LOURENCO DE MEDEIROS - UFRNExterna à Instituição - ANA LUCIA TINOCO CABRAL - PUC - SP
Externa à Instituição - HELCIRA MARIA RODRIGUES DE LIMA