A Terra é plana?: uma análise da articulação entre argumentação epistêmica, multimodalidade e popularização científica no YouTube

Resumo

As the production of scientific popularization content, grounded in polemics, increases in digital media, it becomes necessary to investigate the articulation between argumentation, multimodality and scientific popularization. Since YouTube stands out as a space for this articulation, we aim, in this paper, to analyze how youtubers support their standpoints in a polemical theme with two polarizes stances. We draw special attention to the ways arguers construe the alternative standpoint and to the use of pictorial elements in argumentation. To do so, we draw on a reconceptualization of Toulmin’s layout of arguments (Toulmin, 2006[1958]; Toulmin, Rieke; Janik, 1984[1978]), which considers inputs from its critical literature (Slob, 2006; Verheij, 2006; Grácio, 2010; Freeman, 2011; Langsdorf, 2011; Gonçalves-Segundo, 2016; in press a), as well as on the typology of schemes and macrostructural patterns from Pragmadialectics (Van Eemeren; et al., 2007). We conducted the analysis of an argumentative move extracted from the following video – “A TERRA É PLANA? Com Leon e Nilce”, published by Nostalgia Channel, whose author is the Brazilian youtuber Felipe Castanhari, on Nov. 8th, 2017. Through the analysis, we could show the strategic value of counterfactuals and of the construal of both internal and external argumentation, as well as the different usages of pictorial images in paraphrastic and autonomous relations within the argumentative layout as a result of the tension between explanation and argumentation in the video.