Teaching Portuguese and the problematic approach of linguistic variation in textbooks

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the topic “linguistic variation” in Portuguese language textbooks for secondary education, approved in the National Textbook Plan 2021. To carry out the analysis, we highlight assumptions of Portuguese language teaching from the 1980s onwards, especially Geraldi (2002) and Soares (1986), with emphasis on the entry of the concept of discursive genre (Bakhtin, 2003) at the end of the last century. We propose a qualitative-interpretivist analysis, from the perspective of Indisciplinary Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 1994, 2006, 2022), carrying out a documentary study, in which the seven approved books constitute the selected material. The results point to the presence of the topic “linguistic variation” in all books, as well as aspects linked to linguistic prejudice. However, the conception of language as social interaction, established in studies of discursive genres, does not seem to include the aforementioned topic, presented by activities linked to the evaluation of linguistic use, which end up emphasizing traditional conceptions of language. Finally, we defend the teaching of Brazilian Portuguese as the center of pedagogical work, based on the metaphor of the “roçado linguístico”, thus abandoning the notion of “linguistic adequacy” to assume the “hope” (Freire, 2020) of “agonism” (Foucault, 2011), for us, “linguistic agonism”.