The discourse about the English coursebook: the construction of the truth in the society of control

• Grant number: 12/13902-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2013
• End date: April 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Languages
• Principal Investigator: Marisa Grigoletto
• Grantee: Maria Dolores Wirts Braga
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Our aim to investigate the discourse about the English coursebook inevitably touches on the issue of the coursebook discourse of truth. Driven by the hypothesis that the power of discourse of truth, often attributed to the coursebook, is built by the discourse which speaks about the coursebook, our research aims to study the functioning mode and the effects of that discourse which we name discourse about the English coursebook. Although English coursebooks have been adopted on some courses by some public school teachers here and there, this is the first time that the federal government has proposed the nation-wide adoption of foreign language coursebooks (English and/or Spanish) through the national coursebook program, PNLD 2011, by selecting titles for teachers to choose from and by bearing all the expenses involved in the process. Our research follows the conceptualization of Discourse Analysis as established by Michel Pêcheux. Those concepts guide the analysis of the excerpts in our research corpus, which is composed of three segments: official, with documents issued by PNLD 2011; media, with online news and articles; and professional, with answers provided by public school teachers of English to a questionnaire on the adoption of the English coursebook. Studying how the English coursebook is represented in the discourse about it may help us understand its role in our society nowadays, which we believe can already be characterized as a society of control, as briefly defined by Michel Foucault ([1979] 2004) and further contended by Gilles Deleuze ([1990] 1992).

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

BRAGA, Maria Dolores Wirts. The discourse about the English textbook: the construction of truth in the society of control. 2014. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.