Human rights in conflict:

controversy, verbal violence and emotions on social networks

Abstract

This work analyzes polemics verbal interactions on the subject of human rights in the current Brazilian context in comments of users of the social network site Facebook, paying attention to the linguistic strategies mobilized by them for the inscription of their points of view, as well as observing the functions that the disagreement, verbal violence and emotion can exert in the construction of public polemics on subjects related to the humanization of rights considered essential to life. For this, it is based on the studies of Amossy (2018, 2017a, 2017b) and works by authors like Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1998, 2006, 2014), Brown and Levinson (1999), among others. The results obtained from the analysis of the data suggest that verbal violence and emotion assume several functions in the interactions of users in social networking sites. Although they are not constitutive of the polemic, these linguistic strategies exacerbate the polemic, because they intensify the polarization and the disqualification of the other.