Alternância entre futuro do pretérito e pretérito imperfeito do indicativo no domínio funcional da condição contrafactual em comentários no facebook

Abstract

In this thesis we have addressed the functional area of the counterfactual condition linguistically codified trough the construction “if p, then q”, where the first part state the conditioning and the latter the conditioned. We aim to analyze the variation among the conditional and the pastimperfect tenses in the codification of the conditioned part, evaluating the influences of social (gender, age and education), structural (sentences order and prosthesis structure) and semantic pragmatic (subjective behavior, theme, and type of counterfactuality) factors on the use of those tenses. Our methodological and theoretical content is based on assumptions from variationist sociolinguistic and American functionalism. This methodological and theoretical interface is known in Brazil as ‘Sociofunctionalism’. This research sample is made of 346 conditionals structures of “if p, then q” obtained from digital source, what grants our assignment pioneering in the investigation of the counterfactual condition phenomena in the textual genre Facebook comments, in the scenario of communication through computer. The results, obtained by quantitative analyses, expose an influence of the linguistic marking on the selection of conditional and past-imperfect on the counterfactual conditioned in relation to semantic pragmatic factors. Most marked factors tend to conditional, the most marked form in relation to Facebook comments, while factors set as less marked favor past-imperfect, the less marked form in the approached context. Regarding social factors, the results related to age and gender indicate the possibility of an on-going change headed by women leading to an increase in the use of past-imperfect on Facebook comments. Over education, the results evidence that conditional is favored among writers with college degree and past-imperfect among writers with high and middle school degree. The structural groups factors were not relevant to the phenomena studied.