The conference Literature, Linguistics and Teaching, given by Prof. Dr. Marisa Lajolo (UNICAMP / MACKENZIE), proposed the discussion of dialogues between literature and linguistics in the critical formation of language teachers. It was intended to reflect on these two great areas that currently occur in the courses of Letters in Brazil, to dialogue about how to apply the teaching, it can reverberate the direct instructions and use in the training of readers and freelancers, either in teacher training courses or in basic education. In view of this, topics of interest to areas of Applied Linguistics and Aplicated Education, such as (a)policies educational evaluation in regard to reading; (b) conceptions of reading and the place of this practice in Brazilian daily life; (c) state of the art of language and literacy teacher training in a critical perspective; and (d) objects of literary reading today.
A conferência
The mistaken idea that reading has become an increasingly obsolete practice in the face of the various media alternatives offered by the technological age seems to be consensual. Such a skewed conception, however, is not exclusive to the 21st century: already in the 19th century, around the 1880s, a somewhat biased discourse began to be constructed regarding the valuation of prestigious reading practices, although for reasons not as contemporary as technology (LAJOLO; ZILBERMAN, 1996
It is, therefore, in this intention that the conference
In the first moment of his speech, Lajolo exposes the results of the International Student Assessment Program (ISAP)
Based on these data, which lead to an interpretation of a decrease in the number of readers among the audience covered by ISAP, Lajolo proposes the following questions to teachers and researchers in the field of languages and literature: can it be taken like true that people are reading less, or the researchs assess a type of reading that is not the dominant one? How does the evaluation of hypermedia readings, such as those taken on smartphones, tablets, etc? Notably, such provocations allude to topics of interest in numerous researches developed in the scope of Applied Linguistics and represent the essential character of understanding the different forms of reading for the teaching-learning process from the perspective of critical literacies (SILVA. 2016
The questions raised by the speaker lead her to the second point of her debate: the search for a definition of reading that considers the plurality of languages and intertextualities and does not stop at excluding paradigms. In this sense, Lajolo argues that the act of reading is not restricted to the mere decoding of verbal language, but also expands to the domain of nonverbal and raises recruitment of interpretive skills influenced by different factors (e.g. knowledge of the world, cultural determinants, agreements implicit pragmatists etc).
In this point of his discussion, Lajolo even demonstrates that reading practices have long been associated with a utopian prestige that seems to be consolidated in a relation of dystopia among Brazilian culture. Thus, she uses three examples: two from the 19th century and one from the 21st century.
The first is a publication dated March 24, 1872, in the newspaper
The second, from an 1889 article, published in
Finally, there is the example of this century, of the year 2018
After critically appraising the questionable conceptions regarding the habit of reading in Brazilian society, Lajolo goes on to the third point of his conference, in which she debates the training of professional teachers in the area of Language and Literature in Brazil. At this point, the researcher uses data collected by INEP, which demonstrate the number of colleges authorized to offer Language and Literature Graduations, as well as the number of graduate programs that represent the interdisciplinarity of this field. The table below summarizes the data presented by the author:
Source: Our production.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE GRADUATIONS | |||
Colleges authorized to offer the Language and Literature course in 2017 | Enrollment in Professors Formation of Language and Literature Vernacular | Enrollment in Professors Formation of Language and Literature Modern Foreign | Enrollment in Professors Formation of Language and Literature: Double habilitation |
500 | 78.912 | 44.099 | 41.574 |
Total: 164.585 | |||
GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE | |||
Number of programs in 2020 | Academic Master | Academic Doctorate | Professional Master |
265 | 150 | 105 | 10 |
In view of the quantitative panorama of the training and qualification courses for professionals in the area of Language and Literature, the essential intersection between literary studies and linguistic studies for the training of critical readers is brought to the fore, with the objective of teaching the training of other critical readers. In order to explain this proposition, Lajolo mentions the strong tendency to discuss bakhtinian studies and discourse analysis in these courses, topics of interest to both Linguistics and Literature
Finally, at the last moment, the lecturer exposes possibilities of using evaluation as an instrument to promote critical literacy in Language and Literature courses. As an example, she uses an activity in which undergraduate students of the Language and Literature course must assume authoritative and autonomous collaborative roles in the construction of a Literature booklet for High School. In addition, Lajolo exposes recommendations made to his advisors in post-graduate instances, of which they are requested: (a) a text for scientific dissemination (for undergraduate and post-graduate students) and (b) proposals for activities inspired by his researches for Basic Education.
At the end of his speech, his interaction with the public was marked by questions related to teacher training, such as: the way in which evaluative exams and teaching materials have treated the literary text, the space for working with Literature from possibilities presupposed by BNCC, the specialization of language teaching
In fact, the questions raised by the conference given by Lajolo call attention to the mistake of thinking about the development of reading as a practice closed in literacy, since, as pointed out by Jouve (2002, p. 17
As Câmara (2012
In short, such questions, which are lodged in both linguistic and literary studies, are crucial to the development of agents (trans)former of critical readers.
Available at :
The exact ratio is 350 million examples per 200 million inhabitants (cf. ISAP, 2018).
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This survey, according to the conference, considers who read a book, in whole or in parts, in the 3 months prior to the survey.
The author also mentions the strong brand of works such as Aesthetics of Reception (1989) and Cultural Studies (1998).
As for the specialization of teaching, Lajolo classifies the tendency to separate one teacher for literature, another for writing and another for Portuguese.