| Summary: | This article studies the nature of a disagreement expressed by some judges to their peers in a deliberative judgment, in a Brazilian court of appeal, where three magistrates analyse a legal affair involving a political media fact. The proposed analysis was to inspect linguistic structures where magistrates use a concessive construction as a way to disarm their interlocutor and to push his colleagues to change their mind and join their standpoint. The major interest here was to observe how those judges manage disagreement (stasis) when the polemic is installed during the complex deliberation by magistrates. Our data showed some interesting moments when one magistrate “drag” the objections made by his refractory interlocutor, in a Brazilian court of appeals. The analysis shows the central role of the concessive linguistic structure in that debate and the rhetoric effects caused by that use, confirming that, in a debate, sometimes, people “make an effort to be cooperative and polite in expressing agreement marks, at the same time that they keeps his dignity” in a strategic way (Doury and Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2011). Indeed, the concessive linguistic and rhetorical movement, that we called, in this work, the “dissonant agreement”, occurs in that context mainly to mitigate the disagreement in the deliberation table. This way, as we observed, the most important moment of the argumentation is strategically defeated in a more flexible/smooth way, without became a classical polemical issue, during the deliberation, because of the called dissonant agreement. The main issue of the analysis was to go beyond a simple description of a specific occurrence (the use of concessive structures) to demonstrate regularities in that kind of argumentative interaction and try to update a curious rhetorical and inventive phenomenon. That's why we proposed here to examine more than one concessive linguistic structure, in order to highlight the regularity of the phenomenon that the analysis intends to disclose (i.e. dissonant agreement). In other words, we realized that some statements of agreement and acquiescence of the data analysed did not represent an effective consensus or an acceptance of the other’s standpoint. Effectively, we observed that this way of disagreement, that is, in saying “yes” when someone would like to say “non”, looks more inventive and strategic, because, in that way, someone apparently avoid a possible frontal combat between different standpoints. This strategy demonstrates that “nothing is created ex nihilo in the language” (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2009 : 222). And this ascertainment is really appropriate in this work about a deliberation in a tribunal, because in the examined legal deliberation (“The insulting title’s case”) we could observe the way that sentences in a deliberation mean more than the words apparently try to say; we were able to observe some ways to win a debate in a subtle way, in a legal territory among magistrates. In addition, the trial shows a recent political situation in the recent Brazilian history, what, we guess, might increase the interest for the analysis, because we examine a cultural side, in a situated context. On the other side, it must be said that this case does not represent the general Brazilian political life, but it gives an idea about the headlines that have been visiting newspapers during the last years. In the first part of the article, we propose a theoretical explanation about the rules and effects of politeness in the linguistic field of the Analysis of Conversation. With the help of authors like Grice (1982), Searle (1981), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1992), among others, we will find theoretical support to help us to structure the proposed analysis. In the second part (the language-in-interaction in the legal universe) we present the context from which the data was extracted and, also, we explain summarily the Brazilian legal context. In this way, we try to explain how the civil law and its legislation is used in a Brazilian court, in judgements about moral damage, especially in deliberations with the three or more judges. Finally, in the third part (about a controversial media case) we present a case study to show how the agreement that we called the “dissonant agreement” takes place in a real situation of interaction between magistrates in a Brazilian court in a judgment of moral damage (“the insulting title’s case”). We have analyzed three transcribed excerpts of the judgment to demonstrate how the management of the disagreement takes place all long that deliberation. The conclusion of the work shows possibilities to be “potentially persuasive” (Aristotle) in a legal deliberation, and the way magistrates address to their interlocutors in a judgement among other legal experts. The careful analysis of the interaction among judges during the deliberations recorded is useful to demonstrate the rhetorical dimension of a deliberation and the kind of negotiation that may be made in these situations, where pain and suffering of others are being judged in moral damage cases. Even if the situations analysed do not have an argumentative purpose declared, it might be observed that the speakers tried to adopt strategies to make prevail their conclusions, that is, the amount to be paid, in opposition of those of their colleagues in session, like we tried to show in the analysis. Thus, we believe that the excerpts provide interesting ways to examine the importance of analysing argumentation in context of interaction (Plantin, 2015). In this way, we have looked more closely the process of mitigating the disagreement expressed by magistrates in a polemic legal deliberation. To conclude, we tried, in this analysis, to highlight the strategic dimension of the rhetorical disagreement among magistrates during a polemical trial in a media case, on a legal court in Brazil. As we try to show, the called “dissonant agreement” - or the subtle concessive movement - is an interesting face of the argumentative and rhetorical movement in a legal court in Brazil.
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