This research aims at describing and analysing processes by which the indentity of
portuguese teachers is constructed in the press, how such identity is legitimized by their
(teachers’) discourses and how it achieves social recognition, finding in the press and
other similar media oportunity do emerge. The research corpus comprises several texts
collected from magazines, newspapers, blogs and websites, all of them related to the
teaching of portuguese and having teachers or other professionals as authors. This work
is based on theoretical postulates from Discourse Analysis and Social Sciences,
amongst which the concepts of Discourse, Hegemony and Discourse Memory,
explained in the first chapter. We discuss how said concepts help explaining the
reproduction of discourses (in the press) and the construction of the identity of
portuguese teachers. The concept of Discourse Formations is explained in the second
chapter, based on the works of Foucault (2004) and Pêcheux (2009), as well as the
circular motion between positions of Identification and Couter-Identification. The third
chapter relies on the concept of Imaginary Formations (PÊCHEUX, 1997). We therein
analyse how the teacher may occupy the positions of A, B or R in discourses from the
press, and how the images corresponding to each position are validated by the teachers’
own discourses or by whoever takes up the pen to write publicly about the teaching of
portuguese. In the fourth chapter we discuss the polemic relation between two
Discourse Formations under the the concept of Simulacrum (MAINGUENEAU, 2005),
describing how distorted images of the other are projected in each discourse. In a wider
scale, we intend to show the importance of discourse studies to the field of education,
assuming that teachers’ education concerns not only in-class practices but also social
discoursive practices. In our data analyses, we search for the positions teachers take in
discourses and how teachers forge an identity upon writing publicly about their
profession. Thus, we expect to clarify how portuguese teachers legitimize their
identities in the media, which works as a place where discourses about first language
teaching take form and are widely reproduced.
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