Games of (self) displaying / saying: the subject and the discourse about the English language in the social network orkut / Jogos de (se) mostrar/dizer: o sujeito e os discursos sobre a língua inglesa na rede social orkut

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

Social networks have become very popular. In the specific case of Brazil, this popularity has become more evident after the advent of orkut. Such networks constitute an important setting for textual production regarding diverse themes. Surfing through this social network has drawn our attention to the vast proliferation of communities whose nomenclature makes reference to extreme positioning, mainly the ones named love and hate for something or someone. Based on this tendency, we decided to delimit the corpus by choosing two communities of equal themes and antagonistic positioning, namely: I love English and I HATE English. The utterances that constitute the corpus were produced from 07/30/2006 to 11/28/2006. Due to the possibility of anonymity and/or the creation of fictitious user profiles (fakes) in the network, our hypothesis is that these features could cause a certain effect of freedom regarding the modes of uttering in this context. Relying on theories regarding discourse, and the relations between the subject and language, as well as in Historic Semantics of Enunciation (Guimarães, 2002) and on thinkers about cyberspace, we analyze the utterances produced in the context of those communities in search of clues concerning the subject and the modes of uttering inherent to this media, specifically, those utterances related to the English language, its process of teaching-learning and the relationship of the subject that utters with the English language, as well as with its mother tongue. The analysis has enabled us to observe modes of uttering with a strong hyperbolic tendency, following the pattern of the names given to the communities. It was also possible to establish considerations regarding the subject of this network, which seems to be of a hedonic character, considerably analogous to the subject of the market, that is, that one that is unaware of the lack, and believes to be almighty (CORACINI, 2006, p.149). Finally, we could identify analogies between the processes of teaching-learning a foreign language and the construction of an avatar, which allowed us to analyze not only the identity investments, but also the forms of resistance to the hegemonic discourses concerning the English language and its role in contemporary society.

ASSUNTO(S)

discourse discurso identidade identity historic semantics of enunciation ensino-aprendizagem de línguas estrangeiras redes sociais semântica histórica da enunciação social networks foreign language teaching

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