Gêneros de texto da família das explicações em livros didáticos de língua portuguesa: uma análise com base nos sistemas de ideação e de conjunção

Abstract

The main objective of the present research is investigating instantiations of the Explanations genre family, using the semantic and discursive systems of Ideation and Conjunction from Systemic Functional Linguistics upon the collection Portuguese: Languages (COCHAR; CEREJA, 2005) for the final years of elementary school in order to inform how its Portuguese language content is informed to that educational level. This study is based upon the principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), more specifically on the ideational metafunction (clause as representation and logical relations), within the studies of genre analysis (MARTIN; ROSE, 2008; ROSE; MARTIN, 2012) and the semantic and discursive systems of Ideation and Conjunction. Five criteria were applied to the constitution of the corpus: 1) texts with the socio-communicative aim of informing, 2) texts with a potential to instantiate the Explanations genre family; 3) texts with linguistic clues characterizing the genre in the SFL perspective ; 4) texts belonging to the “Language in Focus” section and 5) texts in authorial voice. Thus, the corpus is comprised of 19 Explanations, which are part of the collection Portuguese/Languages for the final years of elementary school in the triennium 2016 - 2019 (BRASIL, 2015). Linguistic choices related to the semantic and discursive systems of Ideation and Conjunction were analyzed (MARTIN, 1992; MARTIN; ROSE, 2007), considering their lexicogrammatical realization (HALLIDAY; MATTHIESSEN, 2014), according to situational context variables (HALLIDAY, 1989; MARTIN, 1992), in order to identify the stages and phases of the genres. As a result, we found instantiations of three genres from the Explanations family: Conditional Explanation (10), Factorial Explanation (6), and Sequential Explanation (3). Conditional Explanations are organized by the stages of Phenomenon ^ Explanation and by the phases of contextualization, exemplification, condition, reiteration of the Explanation, reiteration of the Phenomenon and divergence, which are conditions for the use of the resources of the Portuguese language. The main linguistic resources identified were the conditional conjunctions “quando (when)” and “se (if)”. Factorial Explanations are organized by the stages of Phenomenon ^ Explanations and through the phases of contextualization, description, concept, factors, reiteration of factors and Phenomenon, and exemplification. Finally, Sequential Explanations are realized by the stages of Phenomenon ^ Explanation and through the phases of contextualization, concept, cause and effect, exemplification, and resumption of Phenomenon. In both Factorial and Sequential Explanations, the main resources from the Ideation semantic and discourse system are the repetition of the participants “coisa (thing) and “pessoa (person); the ellipsis of the participant “coisa (thing)”; the meronymic presentation of “partes (parts)” to clarify the “todo (whole)”. From the Conjunction system, the main resources were the external conjunctions “porque (because)”, “como (as)”, and the internal “logo (thus)” and “mas (but)”. It is important to highlight that in this study there was no occurrence of Consequential Explanations because factors, conditions, and events were used to explain the language. The Consequential Explanation is related to the transformation or clarification of phenomena, which differs from the purposes of the texts analyzed in our research. The analyses of this thesis show characteristic resources of the Explanation genre family within the field of the Portuguese language, which can assist teachers in their classes regarding how to read texts that explain content about language.