Legal Rhetoric of Police Performance in Brazil

Expectations and Possibilities

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2025/77925

This research discusses the problem of applying the perspective of the rhetorical theory of law to examine the police institution, its field of action and the possibilities of a police legal science. The perspective of rhetorical semiotics, developed in the School of Mainz and the New School of Recife, is adopted as a theoretical reference, to establish three levels of understanding of the police: material rhetoric, strategic rhetoric and analytical rhetoric. Respectively, the historical-discursive formation on the role of the police, the prescriptive strategies for modifying the objectives of police action and the potentialities of a rhetorical descriptive analysis are analyzed. In conclusion, the research proposes, as a starting point, a model for scientific and critical understanding of police performance through an analytical rhetoric that challenges Police Law as a field of study focused on the examination of discourses and strategies concerning policing within the local context.