The "ungenred" genres: discourses in the research about the Spanish language produced in Brazil

ARTICLES

The "ungenred" genres: discourses in the research on the spanish language produced in Brazil

Adrián Pablo Fanjul

Professor at Universidade de São Paulo - USP, São Paulo-SP, Brazil; CNPq researcher; [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

In a communication corpus presented in middle-sized congresses in Brazil focusing the Spanish language, we have selected those which approach genre issues designated "discoursive" and/ or "textual". We found that most of them seem to deal with teaching issues. We investigated four issues in those oral presentations: which theoretical articulation is the basis for the work, if it considers or not the peculiarities of a foreign language, if it includes a specific genre as an object for discussion and, in those cases which include it, how this genre or the utterances which represent it relate with other enunciations or different discourse features. We found a disregard for properties which, within the theoretical frameworks mentioned, seem to be central in genre issues, along with an abandonment of the linguistic-discursive materiality as a matter for studies.

Keywords: Discourse genres; The Spanish language in Brazil; Genre and linguistic diversity.

RESUMO

Em um corpus de comunicações apresentadas em congressos de mediano porte realizados no Brasil e referidos à língua espanhola, selecionamos aquelas que abordam problemáticas de gêneros denominados como "discursivos" e/ou "textuais", e verificamos que a grande maioria delas trata também de assuntos de ensino. Para fins analíticos, observamos quatro questões nessas comunicações: que articulação teórica embasa o trabalho, se ele considera ou não a especificidade de uma língua estrangeira, se inclui algum gênero em especial como objeto da discussão e, nos casos que o incluem, como esse gênero ou os enunciados que o representam são relacionados com outros enunciados ou com diferentes instâncias do discurso. A análise apontou desconsideração de propriedades que, nos referenciais teóricos aludidos, aparecem como centrais na problemática de gêneros, juntamente com um abandono da materialidade linguístico-discursiva como lugar de indagação.

Palavras-chave: Gêneros discursivos; Língua espanhola no Brasil; Gênero e diversidade linguística.

1 Different moments for the Spanish language in the Brazilian scientific field

The term "field" will often appear in this article, including in this first subtitle, so, it is essential to explain that we will use it with the same value given in the theorization based on Pierre Bourdieu, for example, in BOURDIEU (1989), as a structured space of positions in relation with a social practice. To a large extent, the phenomena approached in this article have to do with relations and discontinuities between the scientific field and the educational field, above all with displacements of objects and concepts from one field to the other, a process necessarily conflicting. We will begin with a very synthetic information, which does not intend to be a historical one, on places that the Spanish language came to occupy as an object of the scientific field in Brazil, more specifically in the research developed in the university. This synthesis will show soon that those places have been affected, and it could not be otherwise, by the circulation of that language in other fields.

Until the 1990s, the presence of the Spanish language in academic and research spaces in the country had a clear instrumental profile, dictated by the functions attributed to it. Those functions were to make the literary reading viable on the part of the researcher or of the critic, and to train a teacher for a teaching that, except for States as Rio de Janeiro where the insertion of the language into public school systems favored specific reflections, would be mainly held within the ambit of language schools and secondarily in some private schools, where models devoted to communicative skills prevailed and the language was seen as an economic or tourist resource. The masters degree works were almost exclusively devoted to the literatures in that language, while the linguistic reflection on Spanish was almost nonexistent within that ambit. As Celada and González (2000) explain in a text that we recommend to everyone who wants to extend this brief synthesis we are doing here, there was a prevailing approach of the Spanish language based on the most superficial contrast, term to term, in accordance with methods used in the 1940s, or devoted to methodologies and didactic procedures for the teaching modalities that we have already mentioned, which then had a larger visibility.

At the end of the 1990s and at the beginning of the current century, a series of factors converge so that this place (or lack of place) of the Spanish language in the Brazilian research enters a process of change and diversification, which is still going on and where we observe several new tendencies along with recurrences of previous stages. The first factor that must be taken into account in order to understand those changes is external to the academy and has economic and political origins: the processes of regional integration that, before and after their institutionalization in Mercosul, give place to countless exchanges of cultural goods that determine a circulation qualitatively different for the languages in the region. In this context, in the scientific field, particularly in what we could consider as its academic subfield, the interest in the relations between the Spanish and Portuguese languages is presenting a growing specialization. Specifically in the linguistic studies, this relation begins to be approached according to lines with strong development in universities in Brazil and in some neighboring countries: theories about the acquisition of generative inspiration, applications of several perspectives in discoursive and enunciative studies and, to a lower degree, but also marking a growing presence, studies of descriptive grammar. We can observe the production and diffusion of, among others, research works on how Brazilians learn Spanish (GONZÁLEZ, 1994), on comparisons between the functioning of Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish (GROPPI, 1997), on comparisons between the discoursive properties related to both languages (SERRANI, 1994; SANT’ANNA, 2000; FANJUL, 2002), or on aspects of the Brazilian subjectivity mobilized by the contact with the functioning of Spanish (CELADA, 2002), all of them opening paths of investigation that, thanks to the new researchers' contribution, are still productive.

In parallel and as part of the same context of new relations among languages and knowledge in this region of the world, in the period of time in question, the presence of the Spanish language increases qualitatively in the Brazilian educational field. Besides a growing tendency to its inclusion into the curriculum of the regular private teaching, in 2005 the federal law 11.161 establishes a five-year limit so that all secondary schools have Spanish as an obligatory subject

On the one hand, the reflection in the area of linguistic policies gains momentum, essentially focusing the analysis of situations derived from the adoption of Spanish in the school systems and from the conflict among several policies for that language in the world and in the region (LAGARES, 2010). On the other hand, the dominant tendencies in the country, in the research and in the planning of language education, begin to have effects on new academic spaces receptive to the Spanish language. An issue we see related to this last factor is the object of this article.

2 Two symptoms and a query

We are very attentive to the popularization of the production of knowledge related to Spanish in Brazil, having participated, at least in recent years, in the main events where such production is diffused, and having read a large part of the relevant publications. We don't ignore that, to a large extent, the tendencies observed in those places and vehicles are also perceptible within the ambits of work with other foreign languages, including Portuguese, but in this article we are focusing studies on the Spanish language.

The point is that many works often disregard not only the linguistic functioning, but also the textual configuration and the discursive aspect. Although these elaborations include real progresses in the understanding of the complex relations among language, history, and society, the specifics of the discipline tend to be abandoned and there are not enough theoretical articulations to other human and social sciences.

Two symptoms of that process, that we don't consider as "a transdisciplinarian one", but related to an inappropriate disciplinarian simplification, have been drawing our attention. On the one hand, we observe a usage of terminology and a reference to concepts built in social sciences, which are often reduced to the common sense. We will not discuss this problem here, but it should be object of another work. On the other hand, we found what has motivated the query which this article refers to: theoretical-practical approaches of the so-called "discourse genres" and/or "text genres" that neglect the textual and discursive dimensions, even if considered in relation to any of the theoretical articulation invoked in those productions.

In an attempt to understand and clarify what worries us, and based on that understanding to argue in order to give a valid contribution, we examined, in the annals of two significant events for the area held in 2010, all oral presentations that approached in several ways the issue of discourse genres. In the next section we are going to describe the objectives and the methodology of that investigation, as well as the results obtained.

3 Our investigation and its procedures

Our query originated from a previous contact with what would constitute our corpus and from disquietudes relatively identified, then we defined objectives in relation to four issues that we would investigate in the productions to be analyzed: the delimitation of the theoretical articulation, the attention to the dialogic and interdiscursive relations in the enunciations considered or still for the characterization of certain genres, the attention to aspects of textual configuration and the consideration of the specifics of having a foreign linguistic-cultural universe as work space. These four aspects will be addressed in the analysis developed in section 4.

We looked for domestic events with a significant quantity of researches in progress related to the Spanish language in Brazil, presented by researchers under training of scientific initiation, master’s degree or doctorate and/or by university teachers. Then, we considered the annals of the two larger events of that sort held in 2010, in which we had also participated: the VI Brazilian Congress of Hispanists, organized by the Brazilian Association of Hispanists in Campo Grande from August 31 through September 3, 2010 (ESTEVES and ZANELATTO, 2011), and the I International Congress of Teachers of Mercosul’s Official Languages, organized by several associations of teachers, including those of Spanish in the most populated Brazilian States, in Foz do Iguaçu from October 19 through 22, 2010 (FANJUL and MOREIRA, 2011). It was also important for our decision that the congresses had a prevalence of the presentation of research results because works presented just as "experience reports" would not be useful for our objectives.

Among a total of 259 works published in both congresses

We had the criterion to approach those papers as a corpus that would be observed regarding subjects inherent in all of them. We will not individualize any case, so, we will not present quotations. Our purpose is the discussion of tendencies that we see related to the tension between fields explained in the first section of this article, in the context of a transfer between research and teaching which is under development and cannot be reduced to any particular case. Therefore, although the transcription of some formulations and their analysis could enrich this article, we preferred to eliminate that possibility in this work. Our procedure was to determine great variables and, after a quantitative study of the works involved, to conduct a qualitative reflection that didn't require to analyze singular expressions.

The first confirmation, even before establishing any other differentiation, was that only one out of the 14 works was not about educational situations. All the other 13 were presented as teaching researches (in different levels and modalities) or based on education.

In accordance with the objectives mentioned at the beginning of this item, our queries about such productions were as follows:

a) Does the theoretical articulation related to genres take into account elaborations and concepts of heterogeneous theoretical origin? In this case, does it show a perception of such heterogeneity?

b) What are the relations between objects or phenomena in the proposals focusing a certain genre or a group of utterances attributed to a genre?

c) What aspects of verbal materiality are in fact considered in the characterization of the genres or in the enunciations related to them?

d) In those works on teaching (as we have already said, the absolute majority, 13 out of 14), are the initial contact with the second/foreign language and its materiality taken into account? In this case, how is it manifested?

The systematic observation of the productions showed us some regularities and the recurrence of two other phenomena that will integrate our analysis. On the one hand, the argumentations present a kind of contrastive modalization whenever they refer to metalanguage, above all regarding "grammar". On the other hand, a non differentiation between "genre" and "utterance" constitutes an expression of identity in few productions, but we considered it significant, as we will see in the item 5, due to the argumentative orientation with which it is linked, perceptible in many more cases.

In the following sections, we will present observations regarding the four questions we have formulated successively; each section will correspond to one of them. We intend that our work is not limited to the critical observation of the corpus defined, but that it also contributes to examine the complexity of the problems faced by all researchers who try to establish relations between classificatory categories for the discourse, as the one of "genre", and the subject of linguistic diversity and otherness. And, once a large part of the corpus that we will analyze comprises works that intend to contribute with teaching practices, we will end this article also trying to do a reflection on linguistic education.

4 The amalgam concerning heterogeneity

The theoretical frameworks of almost all the works mention sources from two different collections, so we think it is pertinent to observe what aspects lead to their articulation. One reference is the group of scholars that in recent decades came to be known as "Geneva school" and includes, among others that we will mention along this article, Jean-Paul Bronckart, Joaquim Dolz, and Bernard Scheuwly. Another reference is the Bakhtin Circle, in some cases by means of quotations or paraphrases of the Russian theorist, in others by means of the diffusion made by researchers in later years.

We prefer to speak of "two collections", instead of using other terms that would mean clearer delimitations, such as "lines" or "traditions", because, although we could recognize the Geneva circle as a current that nowadays operates with an identity relatively delimitated in a field already constituted of the discoursive studies, the reception of the Bakhtin Circle’s works, as Bubnova (2009, p.5-6) points out, happened in the past and now derives from disquietudes that don't necessarily keep continuity with the historical and epistemologic contexts of their production. Nowadays, in many different places there is a dialogue with this complex theoretical construction, and it is inevitable that such dialogue takes into account our current polemics, what will also happen in this work when we discuss the theorizing by Bakhtin on genres. In addition to it, today part of that work seems to be relatively discontinuous, not just due to the hiatus that separates us from him, but also to translation issues and the unfinished character of some of the texts that we know, factors that lead to a certain terminological oscillation

Are these two collections compatible? We believe it is possible to establish interesting confrontations, relations of convergence and divergence between them, which lead to productive articulations for reflection and research based on the confirmation that it is not about the same thing, nor continuity or "inheritance". The very Genevan circle reveals it to varying extents. Bronckart (2007, p.141-143), for example, makes explicit its differences with Bakhtin regarding the sort of relation between human activity (the author uses the term "forms of activity") and discourse genres. In addition to it, the development he accomplishes, in the whole of the work referred to, of the concepts of "text genres" and "language actions" shows a focus on the cognitive plan that not only differs from the Bakhtinian work, but also from the interests and queries that marked its reception in the literary theory and in the discoursive studies

In our view, that different insertion into human and language sciences, along with the orientation towards the study of acquisition of the language and of its pedagogy that is noticed in the production of the Genevan current, is also visible in its elaborations concerning the genres. By the way, the identification of genres with "models" differs from the denomination "types" that prevails in the translations of Bakhtin. Thus, in Schnewly and Dolz (1999, p.7) the "language" genres are characterized as a "common model" and as an "integrating representation", with an important role in the "appropriation" of language practices by the learner. Still in the reflection on teaching and learning sceneries, some researchers point out differences between the perspective that they see as "Bakhtinian" and the one of the school that we are considering. Rojo (2008, p.93-99), for example, proposes and analyzes tensions resulting from the articulation between both, seeing in the second one the risk of producing a "prescriptive" pedagogic approach, due to the conception of genre as a model

Here, we stress that we don't see obstacles so that a research proposal integrates, in its theoretical articulation, the discussion of those perspectives, assessing to what extent each one of them can contribute to the formulation of issues and objectives, or to determine procedures, provided that there is a recognition and perception of their diversity and discontinuity. Now it’s time to show what we found relevant in the works that constitute the corpus we have defined.

One of the 14 texts only makes reference to a Bakhtin’s work, while all the other 13 include mentions and/or quotations of the two "collections" which we referred to in previous paragraphs. In four cases among those 13 works we registered observations that show a perception of differentiations between them or at least a different location in the field of language studies or of the relations between language and society. In the other nine, the indistinctness is absolute. In enumerations or in sequence we see mentions of works of the Bakhtin Circle, as well as of all the authors already mentioned or others of the same line, in many cases, referred indirectly by other authors. In reasonings where all those heterogeneous reflections seem to have been produced historically to base the "importance of genres" (a category defined without conflict nor nuances) in the teaching, there are also divergent mentions of texts of "genre" and "sphere", as in the official documents that guide the teaching in the country, more precisely the National Curriculum Guidelines (MEC/SEB, 2006).

Even taking into account the restrained space imposed by the format established for oral presentations in congresses, the extension of that result makes evident the little attention given to clarify the theoretical foundation or the little relevance attributed to the construction of that foundation in the researcher's task. We could suppose that such lack has to do with practical choices that prioritize the application of models or the direct passage for reflection on the objects of research. However, as we will see in the next sections, the development of the majority of works clearly diverts from the treatment proposed for the discourse by any of the two "collections" invoked.

5 From the enunciation to externals. Dialogism?

In 10 out of the 14 works analyzed there are specific utterances, which can fit into some genre and are linked with a query or a didactic planning. In 7 out of those 10 works, specifically in their explanatory development, we observed an almost direct passage from the singular utterance to an extradiscursive "reality" commented without any reference to properties more or less prone to generalization of the utterances in question. As a consequence, that passage takes place without establishing relations of alliance and dispute between the utterance and other utterances, nor of confrontation among the genre intended and others. The "dialogism", a term ritually repeated in the paragraphs of theoretical articulation, is completely ignored in practice.

We agree with Machado (2005, p.152) that the theorization of genres in Bakhtin considers "not the classification of species, but the dialogism of the communicative process"

Every utterance must be regarded primarily as a response to preceding utterances of the given sphere (we understand the word "response" here in the broadest sense). Each utterance refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into account. (BAKHTIN, 2004, p.91)

In almost all the works in our sample, as well as in many others that we heard and read in congresses and seminars, there are enunciations about the need of assisting to the "plurality/multiplicity of voices", to the "polyphony" and to discourses related to the "otherness". They are indicative of a dominant filiation in the academic field to conceptions about the relation among language, subjects, and society that, in different ways, question the uniqueness of the speaking subject and the immanence of the text, and in which we include ourselves. But their repetition is also a sign of a certain automatization, where they become mere formulas of inscription into a discursiveness with scarce relation with the effective practices involved. In spite of that repetition, as we see in 70 per cent of the oral presentations that have an utterance as object, there is no attempt to seek in it "half-concealed or completely concealed words of others with varying degrees of foreignness", or "distant and barely audible echoes" (BAKHTIN, 2004, p.93) of the alternation of the subjects in interaction. And in the remaining 30 per cent, although they establish interdiscursive relations

Specifically in relation to dialogism and to close concepts, we also registered in some texts of the sample a phenomenon also noticed in other productions that are not part of those that we have observed systematically: a displacement to values that those terms could acquire in the educational field, above all on the part of teachers or scholars in the education field who are not linked to language sciences. In fact, "dialogism", "plurality of voices" or "someone else’s word" gain the meanings of possible qualities of the teaching/learning scenery and its practices: that the student has the possibility to express himself critically, to disagree or to know different visions and perspectives about some subject. And the terms are transferred to that positive axiologic load without any mark that warns that there is a displacement of their value and operation, as if in fact one was still talking about the same thing. The heterogeneity of the discourse is no longer constitutive of every utterance and starts to be seen as a distinctive feature of certain practices that should be stimulated in favor of a teaching model or even of the building of citizenship.

Such positive, euphoric axiologization reaches an extreme in 4 cases in our sample, that at first draws our attention because they referred to the individual utterances in question as "utterance" or "genre" with no distinction between them. A more attentive reading showed that it was not just a lack of distinction between the general and the particular, but it had to do with the manifestation of a different classification. There is not only the misunderstanding that the utterance is "a genre", but there would also be utterances that are genres and others that are not. The first ones would be those that belong to the real "communication", the "authentic" utterances. The others would be the ones that imply the "artificiality" of a text created "for the class" or supposed conceptions on the language as "a grammar", a recurrence that we will discuss in the following section.

It is true that such extreme was found in few cases, but precisely for being an extreme, it indicates a tendency of which this is one of the expected continuities. In fact, for the analysis and/or for the teaching, the sort of approach of the utterance that seems to be quite spread is not very far from that conceptual distortion. Taking an utterance to the teaching or including it in a survey for didactic planning, and that the whole practice inherent in it is reduced to comment the "facts" and "realities" that it registers or could register, is to obliterate, among other things, what links it to a genre, is to "ungenrize it", no matter how much "authenticity" is attributed to it. To realize the utterance in its generic dimension, which constitutes its insertion into reality, it is imperative to analyze it, as Bakhtin (2004, p.93) explains, "with respect to other, related utterances". And it is worth remembering the observation that the Russian thinker makes in a parenthesis after that affirmation (p.93): "these relations are usually disclosed not on the verbal –compositional and stylistic- plane, but only on the referentially semantic plane".

6 Escapes from materiality

In the theoretical frameworks of practically all the works analyzed, factors of composition and style are mentioned as elements for characterization of genres, always based on the bibliography mentioned or referred to. But among the 10 works that we have already discussed, which present specific utterances as object of studies, just 3 have an effective analytic approach of aspects that can be linked to those two dimensions, in two cases applying some descriptive models with amazing originality. In fact, one of them has nothing to do with teaching.

Among the other 7, there are 2 that comment stylistic characteristics of the genre chosen, appropriately related to the addressee's social place that the genre prefigures. But those characteristics are reduced to the observation of the treatment pronouns, restraining the stylistic dimension to a binary paradigm ("formal"/"informal").

In the other 5, there’s no register about this matter, nor about any aspect of composition. In fact, the compositional dimension is not approached in any of the 10, based on any model, although there’s no shortage, among the theoretical-methodological references mentioned by the authors, of proposals and taxonomics, by the way, applied in many works produced in Brazil, including in the areas of foreign languages. We agree with Brait (2006, p.9) that, starting from the Bakhtin Circle, it was not postulated "a group of precepts systematically organized to work as a closed theoretical-analytic perspective", but it is worth mentioning that in the Genevan "collection" and in the referentials close to it recognized by the authors of the works that we analyzed there are indeed models that, although not completely closed, show a sense of systematization, as the "internal architecture of texts

We believe an analysis of the aspects that are denominated as "compositional" in Bakhtin must investigate the verbal materiality with a descriptive instrumental that will necessarily point out to units of varied comprehensiveness, as well as to semantic and/or syntactic links among them, besides the employment of metalanguages that denominate those units and those links. So, we think it’s time to refer to another recurrence already mentioned in the item 3, which pass by the works analyzed. It’s worth stressing that, besides verifying its appearance in our sample, it seems to us as something copiously heard and/or read in our contact with presentations in forums of our field as a whole, for the study of any language, including the national.

This is about a way to insert into the enunciation denominations referred to the metalinguistic description, above all the "grammar", but not just it. It is a way to enunciate characterized by contrast, which takes the following forms:

- Denial of an exclusiveness: "Not just X" / "something else than X"

- Exclusive, opposed or adversative. "Y, not X" / " Not X, but Y"

- Inclusive Adversative: "Not just X, but Y"

The meaning of "X" varies, being "the grammar", "the grammatical rules", "the textual types", "the argumentative markers", "the code", in short, denominations more or less pertinent representing everything that is required in a metalanguage; as a matter of fact, this term appears in one case. In the place of "Y" is "the meaning", "the real", "the practices" or, simply, "much more". Some examples that illustrate that recurrence are "Not just a grammar", "Not grammatical rules, but a social practice", "Not just textual types or argumentative markers, but the meaning produced in real contexts"

Such sort of formulation appears practically in the whole sample, except for two cases. We believe it is pertinent to investigate its argumentative operation in the space of interlocution where it is produced. Against what and against who is the argument? This is about oral presentations in congresses, what implies the scientific field, or an intersection of it with the sector with the largest symbolic capital in the educational field. In that intersection, we don’t see for almost 40 years conceptions on languages or on their teaching that could be reputed as restrained to "rules", indifferent to the context, that think the language as isolated sentences or stocks of words. For decades what we have in common is the concern with the production of meaning and the search for answers about the language among the social practices. Then, why is such almost ritual repetition necessary? Given that in the research practices and knowledge production involved in those productions we don’t see other approaches for the description and classification of the language facts, would not these excessive reiterations indicate the major difficulty still faced so that the teaching of languages can be something different from that repetitive formalization? And would not the escape from materiality towards a "social", which is not investigated precisely in the utterances with which one works, have to do with that lack?

In his recent intervention in a round-table discussion on the role of linguistic studies in the teacher training, González (2011, p.10-11) referred to that paradox:

In my view, the lack of that descriptive apparel also makes that the grammar is reduced to its worst aspects and that, for its approach, people employ simplifications, senseless, arbitrary rules, explanations already overcome by the large volume of more solid researches, being those rules and simplifications applied in senseless activities, that only (re)feed the rejection of the grammar. A rejection that in many cases is unfortunately reiterated even by some people who train teachers. In short, we often see in the language teaching the study of their grammar denied or at least having its importance diminished, but always comes the time when it must be approached and, in the lack of an appropriate descriptive apparel, it is made in the most reducing way, if not overcome and mistaken. And this is made without establishing the necessary relations between that materiality and the meaning

There are also places in our sample where we realize that, in spite of what is asserted, the effective relation with language facts, whenever approached, continues out of context and without pointing out a link among the levels of the linguistic and discursive functioning. In one of the oral presentations analyzed, which tries to explain the didactic productivity of a genre that in no moment is characterized on the basis of any discursive approach, the only didactic practice proposed with three texts representative of it is to fill in the blanks for the occurrences of a certain class of word or verbal form (a different one for each text). Right after the "theme" of the text is located as "traverse", the text is abandoned and a search in the Web on the "facts" is recommended to the students.

So, unfortunately, we don't see "anything besides a grammar". The fact is that there is a growing distance from the linguistic materiality and from the regularities in all dimensions of its operation, including the syntax, the reference production, the textual plot, the enunciative configuration, and the dialogism.

7 Othernesses among languages and queries on genres

As we have already mentioned in the third section of the article, 13 out of the 14 texts in question address teaching in different ways, mentioning surveys and classifications of genres for some planning or assessing results of the work about any discursive genre in the teaching scenery. In 9 of them, the fact of being about another language is only noticed due to the texts brought as objects, but it is not part, in any way, of the reflection on the category of discourse or text genre and its insertion into the work of the researcher or of the teacher, as if it didn't acquire any specifics or complexity when there is an occasion of linguistic-cultural contact, what is obviously the case in the teaching of a foreign language. And in some of the cases where it is approached, it is reduced to the question regarding the existence/nonexistence of such genre in the other language/culture.

We believe such disregard for the issue of discourse genres in linguistic-cultural othernesses is a serious omission, above all in relation to genres that indeed exist in several languages. Not just because different lines of discursive studies have theoretical tools that could lead to a reflection on it, but because there are also, in the Bakhtinian reflection on "expressiveness", some instigating clues to approach the complex issue of genres through different languages.

The "spark of expression" (BAKHTIN, 2004, p.87) does not exist in the words of a language nor in reality, being generated by the contact between both, a contact that occurs in the enunciation. Besides the individual expressiveness there is, according to the Russian author, an expressiveness inherent in each genre, and in it, the word acquires a "typical" expressiveness (2004, p.87). However, it does not belong to the word as a language item, but to the genre, and it is "an echo of the generic whole that resounds in the word" (p.88). The link with the issue of memory is evident, and it is based on it that we will weave some considerations.

We believe that process necessarily works in a different way in the perception of a speaker to whom that language is the second one. The echo can be heard in unexpected ways or be dispersed, and, jointly, the word somehow is re-directed to the language, because due to the strangeness for the foreigner the link of the word with the body of the other language materializes in an imperative way. Nonetheless, we don't think the 'typical expressiveness’ is annulled, above all in the current state of Portuguese and Spanish in this region of the world, a contact that propitiates reverberations for its very interesting echoes.

In South America, these two languages represent a type of proximity particularly interesting for the study of the discursive operation, not only due to their kinship and to the irregular differentiation in their historical delimitation as linguistic-political units. In our view, what is more relevant are the effects of a historicity that has colonization processes in common, although conducted in different ways, the insertion into social formations with similar inequalities and in a region that, even before the so-called "integration processes", formed a group in terms of its relative position in the world economy and politics.

This explains why researches diffused in our milieu consider the discursive memory as a privileged space to investigate current relations between those languages and the displacements of the subjectivities in their inset, a term particularly clever that we borrowed from the title of a recent article that affirmed that, in each one of those languages, there are

certain regularities which, due to the work of separation they were submitted to, produce resonances: remembering, reminding, indicating, evoking, insinuating or simply alluding to ways of saying of the other’s operation (CELADA, 2010, p.117-118)

In reflecting on that issue, in this case based on the concept of "space of memory" formulated by Pêcheux (1990), in Fanjul (2009, p.199), we propose, in order to approach relations between Portuguese and Spanish in the discursive level, the possibility of "shared spaces of memory"

In considering such typical expressiveness a memory of the genre in language materiality, we think it is particularly productive to observe those approaches and differences between Portuguese and Spanish systematically in discourse genres manifested in spaces of world scale, as well as in those that are delimited as such in the space of one of the languages, which allow to investigate echoes of its expressiveness in the other’s realm. This, of course, requires efforts to investigate and describe the materiality.

Concluding: What profiles and training should be favored?

We tried to base the concern we expressed at the beginning of the article in relation to what we realize as a growing disregard for the study of the linguistic, textual, and discursive operation, which constitutes our specific aim as researchers and trainers for the linguistic education. And, not only in the sample analyzed, but also in a discourse that circulates insistently in the same spaces, the objectives of that aspect of education are related to the need to contribute in the development of a sense of citizenship.

But, is the distance from metalanguages useful to the sense of citizenship? Experts in the role of metalanguages in the development of culture and of relations of power don’t see them as a dispensable or innocuous luxury. Auroux (2002, p.9) reminds us that grammatization "changed deeply the ecology of human communication and gave the West a medium of knowledge/dominance over other cultures in the planet"

And what we are seeing is not only an escape from "grammar", but from everything that means to describe some sort of regularity in the discursive surface or in its interdiscursive relations. Apparently, the purpose is to abandon as fast as possible the operation of languages and to privilege an assessing perspective of the "themes" and "facts". Such direction reminds us Bakhtin’s critique, which we mentioned at the end of the item 5, on the habit of analyzing the relations among enunciations only "in the thematic plan, not in the discursive one".

It does not seem promising to train a teacher who will comment "subjects" and "facts" without a discipline of study as a solid foundation. It is also senseless to base that profile by means of researches with tools and practices that ignore the materiality of processes of meaning, because it does not provide a proper understanding of the linguistic functioning and the future professional will only grasp the most basic versions of the traditional normative grammar. We would also deprive the student of the intellectual -- and why not, political – challenge of reading and enunciating the subtleties in the verbal materialities that sustain crucial aspects of human relations. If this challenge is not posed within the ambit of the work with languages, it is unlikely that the student meets it in other stages of his education.

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¹

. A similar process, although much slower, takes place with the Brazilian Portuguese in the neighboring countries, above all in Argentina

²

. This presence of Spanish in the educational field obviously requires teacher training and a consequent increase in positions in higher education institutions. Thus, it begins to have a strong impact on the academic and research fields, interacting, in spite of some contradictions, with the ongoing tendencies in the research field, as we have already mentioned in the previous paragraph.

³

, we selected those that included among their objects of study, to a higher or lower degree, genre issues and a specific genre (for example, "opinion columns", "job announcements", etc.). We took into account the presence of the term "discourse genres" (or "discursive"), as well as "text genres" (or "of text"), and the papers that alternated both denominations. At the end, we had a total of 14 papers

⁴

.

⁵

.

⁶

, centered on the heterogeneity of voices in the discourse and in its relation with the subjectivities and with history.

⁷

.

⁸

. So, we don't think it is coherent with that theoretical basis to jump directly from the "exemplar of the species" to "reality" in terms of the social-historic context or of the teaching situation, without examining the relations in which the utterance is inserted into a sphere of human activity and communication:

⁹

, such relations don’t have a central role in the objectives or in the analysis of results.

¹⁰

" (BRONCKART, 2007, p.119-135), recognizable in several productions diffused in our milieu, or the "specific configurations of language units

¹¹

" (SCHNEUWLY e DOLZ, 1999, p.11-12).

¹²

.

¹³

.

¹⁴

.

¹⁵

among discursive sequences in both languages and of "a paraphrastic functioning between them"

¹⁶

, favored by the discursiveness and often concealed by the difference among forms of the languages.

¹⁷

. We believe that a major contribution of ours, as researchers, for the essential role of the work on languages in education can be the promotion of critical knowledge about metalanguages according to a transforming perspective, what we will never get if we flee from them.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Aug 2012
• Date of issue
  June 2012

History

• Received
  14 Mar 2012
• Accepted
  07 May 2012