Modalization as an argumentative-semantic strategy in the textual genre called Memo

This article aims to analyze and describe the argumentative structure and functioning of the modalizers in the textual genre called memo. The theoretical reference used to this research is composed by is composed by the Theory of Argumentation in the Language by Ducrot and collaborators (1988) and by the Modalization studies which is based in Castilho and Castilho (1993), Nascimento (2009) and Koch (2000), among others. These theoretical studies explain how a speaker can use argumentative strategies to determine their intentions or even persuade others and, in this way, interfere in the actions of their interlocutor. The corpus of this investigation is composed by 20 memos which have been collected from two public institutions: the Defense Ministery – Brazilian Army and the Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil. In the analysed memos we have noticed that the argumentation is present in the genre through the use of modalizers and we have also verified the occurrence of their several types: Epistemic, deontic and evaluative, which have the function of printing different meaning effects in the text.