Over-informative focus in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This article investigates the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of sentences written in Brazilian Portuguese presenting a type of focus we call over-informative focus. Sentences with this type of focus identify that the speaker brings to the context information that go beyond the required ones, which may indicate the violation of Grice's maxims (1975). However, in a more profound analysis, we have identified that the speaker using the over-informative focus respects all conversational maxims, highlighting the relevance one. Our aim is to prove the speaker adopts such focus as a discourse strategy to highlight the positive properties and to soften the negative ones from a given set of individuals.