THE PRONOUNCEMENT DECISION IN LIGHT OF DISCOURSE GENRES

Abstract

This article aims to carry out a linguistic-discursive analysis of the genre indictment decision, in light of the theory of speech genres proposed by Bakhtin (2011), taking as corpus a feminicide case that occurred in the municipality of Marabá, Pará, Brazil. The study is situated within the field of research that articulates language and law, seeking to understand how the dimensions of legal discourse are constituted in this genre. Methodologically, this is a qualitative study based on the documentary analysis of an indictment decision available on the JusBrasil platform. Through careful reading of the corpus, we examined the three Bakhtinian dimensions of genre: theme, composition, and style, with special attention to the management of voices within the utterance. The results show that the indictment decision presents a relatively stable compositional organization, structured into report, reasoning, and operative part, while simultaneously mobilizing multiple voices, such as those of the prosecution, defense, witnesses, and the judge, thus configuring a polyphonic and socially situated discourse. It is concluded that the analyzed genre is fully consistent with Bakhtin’s theoretical framework, revealing itself as a privileged space for articulating language, law, and social practices, as well as for expanding linguistic perspectives on legal discourse.