BOOK REVIEW: DESVENDANDO DISCURSOS: CONCEITOS BÁSICOS

Discourse Analysis (DA) is an area of expertise within the Linguistics and Communication field in which the focus is the analysis of ideological constructions found in a text. One of the ideas brought by the discourse analyses is that the discourse itself is a social construction and can only be studied inside its social and historical context.

One of the ramifications of the Discourse Analyses is the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), an interdisciplinary study that sees language as a social practice and goes deeper into the ideological motives of each discourse (Fairclough, 1989).

“Desvendando discursos: conceitos básicos”, organized by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard1 and Leonor Scilar-Cabral2, presents articles from fifteen authors encompassing from basic concepts to specific subjects involving DA and/or CDA concerning to themes such as translation, gender and identity. All articles emerged as a result of Malcolm Coulthard3’s visit to UFSC and several courses given by the professor and researcher, and also cover topics of Coulthard’s works including translation, lexicography, theoretical analysis and gender studies.

___________________________

1 Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard is a doctor in the English Language by the University of Birmingham, where she is also senior professor since 1996. Caldas-Coulthard is a professor of Linguística Aplicada and Língua Inglesa at UFSC.

2 Leonor Scilar-Cabral is a doctor in Linguistics by USP, post doctorate by University of Montréal and is also a professor at UFSC.

3 Malcolm Coulthard is a professor emeritus of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Birmingham and since 2005 a cathedratic professor in Forensic Linguistics at University of Aston.

The book is divided in fifteen chapters, being the first a brief introduction written by the organizers, followed by thirteen articles and one last chapter containing information about each author.

The first article “Da Análise do Discurso à Análise Crítica do Discurso: introduzindo conceitos”, written by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, focuses mainly on Critical Discourse Analyses and suggests a discussion about the political and ideological processes involved in the language social functioning. She sees discursive practices as behaviour manners which place us in social groups, mentioning Saussure, social semiotics and the parole-langue dichotomy, then proposing a new dichotomy to be used by those who work with DA: critical and non-critical approaches.

Caldas-Coulthard finishes her article explaining some of the concepts which will be used and explored throughout the rest of the book.

Branca Telles Ribeiro4 and Maria das Graças Dias Pereira5 are responsible for the second article “A noção de contexto na Análise do Discurso”; and, based on data gathered from classrooms, an informal conversation between grandfather and grandson, internet chats and psychiatric clinics and the study by Hymes, show how the discourse changes according to the situation, meta-orientation and context – using a micro, local and situational analyses. This article also brings ideas about the ethnographic research applied to Discourse Analyses.

The third chapter brings the article “Estórias, vida cotidiana e identidade – uma introdução ao estudo da narrativa”, in which Liliana Cabral Bastos6 introduces the studies of Narratology very briefly and presents some questions to be answered by researchers in that area: “por que as narrativas são tão presentes em nossas vidas cotidianas?”, “o que significa contá-las?”, “o que estamos fazendo ao contá-las?” and “por que gostamos de contá-las e ouvi-las?”.

The author presents her argumentation based on stories from Let/PUC-Rio database, explaining the elements of each narration according to Labov’s proposal (1967, 1972).

___________________________

4 Branca Telles Ribeiro is a doctor in Linguistics by the University of Georgetown and associate professor at Lesley University.

5 Maria das Graças Dias Pereira is a associate professor of Language Studies at PUC-Rio.

6 Liliana Cabral Bastos is a doctor in Linguistics by PUC-Rio and was a researcher at Georgetown and Harvard Universities. She is also a professor at PUC-Rio and CNPq researcher.

The next article presented is “Discurso e Raça” by Célia Magalhães7 and explains Fairclough’s theory and its relation to CDA. Since the 1980s, Fairclough has been publishing many articles on Discourse and its critical theory, having a massive influence from Halliday’s systemic linguistics (1985) and elements from Foucault, Pêcheux and Bakhtin. The author shows how Fairclough managed to go further than the previously mentioned theoreticians when it comes to topics like power and ideology within discourses.

Magalhães, in this article, analyses different discourses and shows evidences of racial discrimination and prejudice towards the afro descendents in Brazil

Rosa Weingold Konder8 presents in her article “A interpretação de textos literários na perspectiva da gramática sistêmico-funcional”, once again, Halliday’s theory and its principles. The Ideational Metafunction is a combination of logical and experiential components - which works through the Transitivity System (Halliday, 1994), including processes (verbs), participants, circumstances and what happens inside and outside our “world”.

The sixth article, “A Análise Crítica do Discurso na sala de aula: uma proposta de aplicação pedagógica” is written by Débora de Carvalho Figueiredo9 and explores the pedagogical applications of Critical Discourse Analyses, based on language as a social interaction and focusing on the literacy developed inside the classroom. The author elaborates about Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, where the process includes production and interpretation and emphasizes not only the creative aspect of interpretation, but also its critical aspects and social influences. Figueiredo presents two interpretation exercises assigned in the classroom environment to exemplify what should be done by teachers; she concludes that merely explaining the interdependence between reading and writing is not enough to flourish students’ interest and ability towards this two activities.

___________________________

7 Célia Magalhães is an adjunct professor of Translation and Critical Discourse Analyses at UFMG, master in Linguistics and doctor in Comparative Literature by UFMG. She has also been a researcher at University of Nottingham, York University and University of British Columbia.

8 Rosa Weingold Konder is professor emeritus at UFSC and visiting professor at UFC and UFF. She was also an adjunct professor at UFRJ for many years.

9 Débora de Carvalho Figueiredo is a doctor in the English language by UFSC and a professor of Ciências da Linguagem at UNISUL.

“Discurso e identidade de gênero” is the following article and discusses the relation between discourse and gender identity. Susana Bornéo Funck10 defines in this chapter, based on Fairclough’s definition of language, what would be the actual purpose of the gender termination. In a short historical overview, the author establishes the 1980 decade as being the moment in which the closer relation between gender and discourse started. Closing the article, she indicates that an analysis of the daily “routine” situations must be done in order to eliminate gender inequality and reconstitute gender relations.

Maria do Carmo Leite de Oliveira11 writes the eighth article “Polidez e interação”, in which she studies how “common” people and theoreticians understand the concept of politeness. Robin Lakoff (1973), Brown and Levinson (1978) and Leech (1983) are the theoreticians mentioned; the first theory establishes maxims based on Gricean’s, the second elaborates the face-threatening acts (FTAs) and the last develops the politeness principles based on Halliday’s sayings. The author presents several examples from journalistic extracts to company policies and procedures books.

As a conclusion, she defines politeness as being related to elegance, positive conduct and something which produces a social effect always based on interaction, but coming from an ideal behavior in a certain group, time and place.

The book would surely have a contribution by Malcolm Coulthard, which is the ninth article called “Algumas aplicações forenses à linguística descritiva”. This chapter introduces the reader to the Forensic Linguistics, elaborating on the two areas of expertise: Phonetics and Linguistics. Coulthard develops his text around the concepts and ideas of authorship, error standards and recurrence and specific characteristics of groups’ registers and speaking styles. Besides various examples, the author concludes his article saying that Forensic Linguistics has a long path to go and is a promising area of studies, especially in the United States of America.

Adriana Silvina Pagano12 is the author of the next article “Abordagens sistêmicas da tradução”, presenting a dialog between translation studies and systemic

___________________________

10 Susana Bornéo Funck is a doctor in Humanities by University of Texas and was a professor of literature at UFSC.

11Maria do Carmo Leite de Oliveira is a doctor in Linguistics by PUC-Rio, a professor at the same University and at IAG (business school of PUC-Rio). She has also been a researcher at University of Lisbon.

functional grammar (SFG). Pagano draws a brief comment on the origins of systemic theories focusing, however, on Halliday’s SFG proposal through an analysis of an extract taken from The Inheritors. The author makes a comparative study between different translations of the preciously mentioned excerpt, supporting her arguments on Fairclough’s views and other examples of translation discrepancies. To conclude, she states that the objective of her studies is not to create or find rules for writing and translating, but to improve our understanding about systemic theories.

The eleventh article in the book is “Linguística de Corpus e Análise de Discurso” and the author, Tony Berber Sardinha13 and Leila Barbara14, focus their text around two ideas: Coulthard’s theory of CDA and the association between DA and Sinclair’s theory of Corpus linguistics. Several examples taken from a Journalism course at university in Sao Paulo led the authors to conclude that in order to understand individual choices, beliefs and context of each writer there has to be a correlation between Discourse Analyses and Corpus Linguistics. This relation can also be applied to the classroom; some strategies for the teacher to see the class as a whole are suggested by Sardinha and Barbara.

“O discurso do dicionário” refers to a contradictory notion: everyone uses dictionaries but very few study them. Based on the Corpus Linguistics, Philippe Humblé15 presents the history of dictionaries since the very beginning until nowadays, going from monolingual dictionaries to bilingual ones – being the last slightly different to be analyzed for having less reference to authors. Humblé yet distinguishes production from comprehension and examines use, examples and function.

Bringing the book to an end, Leonor Scilar Cabral writes about the late acquisition of discourse abilities in her article “A emergência das habilidades

___________________________

12 Adriana Silvina Pagano is an adjunct professor of English and Translation at UFMG, doctor also by UFMG and post doctorate by University of Massachusetts.

13 Tony Berber Sardinha is a professor at PUC-SP, a doctor by the University of Liverpool - where he is also a researcher- and has post doctorate by the Northern Arizona University.

14 Leila Barbara is a doctor by PUC-SP, where she is also a professor of the Letras program.

15 Philippe Humblé is a doctor in Translation by UFSC and adjunct professor of Spanish Language and Literature also at UFSC.

discursivas”. In order to illustrate this process, the author presents an analysis of a 20 months old Brazilian child’s egocentric speech – or monologue. Her studies showed that this child has only a kind of third person discourse and does not have the comprehension on the grammatical persons; even adults use that discourse to speak to children instead of using the first and second persons.

Besides that, Cabral uses varied examples to demonstrate how – mainly through answering WH and YES/NO questions - the discursive abilities rise. About the conception of egocentric speech, this chapter presents a comparison between Piaget and Vygotsky; for the former this stage occupies and intermediate position between autistics and directed thought, for the latter the monologue is a transition step towards interiorized language.

In essence, “Desvendando discursos: conceitos básicos” provides not only an overview of different common topics within Applied Linguistics, but also very useful explanations on many concepts regarding this area of studies. Supported on varied examples, well known theoreticians and constantly contextualizing each view, the authors of all articles make complex ideas and subjects very accessible and clear to readers.

Although the chapters do not go too deep in their topics, I would not recommend this book for complete beginners in AL. A minimum of understanding and previous knowledge of that area is demanded in order to take full profit of each article.