Causality and contrast in an opinion article: a pedagogical intervention in elementary school
Argumentation. Causality. Contrast. North American functional linguistics. Textual linguistics.
Our research focuses, through a pedagogical intervention in a 9th grade class, on the relations of causality and contrast mobilized in the opinion article genre. Our aim is to help improve students' communicative competence in a monitored writing situation by working with the linguistic mechanisms that establish causal and contrastive relationships. To this end, we base our work on North American Functional Linguistics (GIVÓN, 1995; FURTADO DA CUNHA; BISPO, 2013) and its correlation with Portuguese language teaching (BISPO; CORDEIRO; LUCENA, 2022), as outlined in official curriculum documents (BRASIL, 1998, 2018). We also mobilized contributions from Textual Linguistics, notably based on Koch (2000), Marcuschi (2005, 2008) and Antunes (2003, 2005), and Argumentative Semantics, according to Ducrot (1984). Methodologically, it is a qualitative and quantitative research, involving descriptive and explanatory aspects. The descriptive aspects are related to the characterization of the linguistic elements mapped in the students' textual productions, as well as the treatment given to these elements by traditional grammars, based on a bibliographic survey. The explanatory aspects are due to the analysis and interpretation of the material generated in the intervention process. Since the pedagogical intervention was recently implemented, but the data generated has not yet been analyzed, we have no discussion of the results relating to this part of the research. However, we have started to analyse the didactic collections approved in the 2020-2023 PNLD in terms of their treatment of linguistic elements that convey relationships of causality and contrast, in terms of their relevance to the organization of argumentative texts and the construction and/or direction of argumentation.