Representations of language constructed by the press: research about the controversy around the book "Por uma vida melhor"

• Grant number: 13/23427-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: April 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Applied Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Claudete Moreno Ghiraldelo
• Grantee: Evelise Raquel Morari
• Host Institution: Instituto Básico de Humanidades (IBH). Universidade de Taubaté (UNITAU). Taubaté , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research proposed in this project aims to analyze the journalistic texts published by the mainstream press about the publication of the Portuguese Language textbook Por uma vida melhor used for Adults and Youth Education. These texts, responsible for the creation of a controversy, were centered in a few sentences of a single chapter of the book entitled "Writing is different from speaking." Based upon a discursive approach, it will be considered the following concepts: subject, language conceptions, speech; discursive formation and ideological formation. When a journalist writes a text he/she assumes a particular position-subject on the speech continuum, taking this as the relationship between language and ideologies, which are materialized through language in written or oral texts. The authors of the textbook also assume certain discursive and ideological positions in the way they select the content to be regarded in the book, the sequence in which it appears and in the way they treat it, as well as the way they address themselves to the potential students of the book. The language is taken as being opaque, which holds the misconception. In this research, it will seek to trace the representations that journalists construct of the Portuguese Language of Brazil, of the authors of the textbook; of the linguists, of the grammarians; and of the students for whom the book is directed. The corpus will be composed by journalistic texts, the chapter of the book where the phrase that created all the controversy is, and the book on its whole. The texts will be analyzed by the enunciative regularities that refer to certain discourses, resulting from ideological formations, and how these discourses are materialized in the linguistic surface. (AU)