universidade federal de santa catarina pós-graduação em letras ...

248He points out that the author soon realizes the mistake in superestimating the economist’srole and “takes a twist” toward theory.Economics BRs in the corpus mirror the general need of reaffirming the status of thediscipline as an objective, quantitative field of study in terms of the commonly consecratedpositivist model of science, favoring the persuasive-unconvincing dimensions of terms forpraise and blame.To credit a book as persuasive is to accord it a high value, usually through the use ofexpressions that relate to rational solutions and justifications for economic questionsoffered by the author of the book, such as ‘lucid book full of sound judgments’, ‘lucidexposition’, ‘plausible account’, ‘arguments specially persuasive’, ‘well justified’.Conversely, when reviewers want to discredit a book, they define it as unconvincing(‘book lacks a convincing and plausible measure of effects’, ‘authors are unconvincing’,‘denunciation unsupported and untenable’, ‘adventurous and eccentric treatment ofmaterials’, ‘lack of convincing plausible measure’). The preference for using terms such as“rigorous” to praise a book expresses the traditional central axis of the mathematicalthinking as expressed by Leibniz, that is, truth propositions are those that can bedemonstrated with exactness, precision, and objectivity (Loi, 1988).Furthermore, in order to receive a positive recommendation, books must presentcharacteristics pointing towards the ‘attractive’ end of the attractive-uninterestingcontinuum. Expressions referring to mathematics are often accompanied by different termsused to praise the book such as “very neat”, “well presented”. In fact, book reviewers tendto emphasize the elegance with which writers treat the topic of the book with expressions