Breaking Conversational Maxims in Armandinho Comic Strips: A Methodological Possibility for an Expressive Brazilian Portuguese Teaching

Abstract The main objective of this paper is to contribute to text studies based on 1) Genres Theory as social practices; 2) a possible typological overlap in genres; and 3) on the relation between genre and intentionality through a pragmatics approach. Particularly, we investigate if four ninth grade students would understand the conversational maxims break as an expressive resource to produce humor; and if they would perceive the argumentative content of these narrative-based dialogues. This analysis takes part into three comic strips featuring Armandinho, the questioning boy. Sustained on the interpretivist paradigm, we do a linguistic data analysis, instrumentalized by discussions about speech acts and the breaking of the conversational maxim of manner. The results indicate that those students understand that the breaking of the maxim of manner constructs the humor of the comic strips; nevertheless, they do not seem to comprehend the linguistic phenomenon also as a participant in the argumentativeness implied in the lines.