O presente artigo busca elucidar os fatores de manutencao e permanencia de alunos em uma instituicao de ensino superior privado brasileiro e correlaciona as motivacoes apresentadas pelo aluno no momento do trancamento da sua matricula. Entende-se essa uma questao estrategica, de preocupacao fundamental para os gestores dessas instituicoes tendo em vista a relevância da manutencao dos alunos matriculados e a reducao dos indices de evasao. De acordo com o MEC para cada 100 alunos ingressantes nas IES apenas 46 se formam. Tal e a importância, que consta no Plano de Desenvolvimento de Educacao (PNE) o objetivo explicito da reducao da evasao e aumento da proporcao dos alunos formados em relacao aos que ingressam. Para investigar quais os fatores que mantem os alunos estudando ou o que os faz evadir foi realizado um estudo de caso, em uma instituicao de ensino superior, na regiao metropolitana da cidade de Sao Paulo.

In this paper I discuss the rhetorical relations established in two contexts of occurrence of adverbial clauses and appositive relative clauses, as follows: the clauses may be realized either in their canonical form or apart from the main clause, as independent clauses, which I have been calling “floating structures”. My object of investigation isthe equivalence among (a) certain textual-discourse functions performed by such structures, such as “evaluation”, “restatement”, “focus”, among others ─ all pertaining to clause combining at a micro level of text organization; (b) the rhetorical relations considered at a macro level of discourse organization; and (c) the syntactic functions performed by those structures. Basically, this study is carried out within de framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory, according to its development by functionalist researchers from the West coast of North America.Key words: rhetorical relations, textual-discourse functions, clause combining, syntactic functions, functionalism.

Neste estudo sobre a promoção internacional do espanhol, centramos a análise no acordo ¡Oye! Espanhol para professores, assinado em setembro de 2006 entre o Banco Santander espanhol e a Secretaria de Educação do Estado de São Paulo, cuja finalidade era a formação de 45.000 professores de espanhol para atuarem no ensino médio brasileiro. O acordo, que envolveu também o Instituto Cervantes espanhol, recebeu uma forte oposição por parte da comunidade educacional, que se mobilizou para sustar sua implementação. Neste trabalho, apresentamos e analisamos diferentes ações e discursos face ao acordo por parte dos agentes envolvidos no debate, ao mesmo tempo em que examinamos a cobertura midiática que receberam tanto o acordo em si quanto os discursos e ações em favor ou contra ele. Por um lado, mostramos que os interesses econômicos preponderam sobre a cooperação cultural, e que as ações dos agentes da promoção lingüística seguem uma lógica empresarial que aborda a promoção da língua como uma atividade lucrativa e um ponto de penetração comercial. Por outro lado, tivemos a reação dos oponentes ao acordo em termos das tensões provocadas pela convivência de contextos nacionais e globais de política lingüística. Concluímos que algumas das estratégias dos agentes de promoção do espanhol e das empresas espanholas em expansão para se contrapor à resistência foram, de um lado, a elisão ideológica da oposição e, de outro, a criação de uma comunidade alternativa, a comunidade ibero-americana, na qual suas operações se neutralizam e sua presença fica naturalizada. Palavras-chave: Banco Santander, comodificação lingüística, espanhol no Brasil, globalização, ideologia lingüística, Instituto Cervantes, promoção lingüística, ¡OYE!, Secretaria de Educação do Estado de São Paulo.

Rojo e Moita Lopes in a seminar paper, “Languages, codes and their tecnologies” criticize the Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Medio (PCNEM), 2004 and the PCN+ and raise a number of problems that need to be debated in depth in order to prepare a language policy in Brazil. In the course of my article, I inquire what the concepts “citizenship” and “ethics” entail. I ask if those concepts should actually be given space in the curriculum in Brazilian elementary and secondary schools. Key words: reading, ethics, identity, citizenship.

There are a variety of voices and conceptions present in the daily routines of a classroom which may also reveal the reasons underlying the pedagogical orientation of teachers and behaviors of learners. Among the many beliefs related to learning, this paper discusses the role of the human body in the learning process, more specifically in the development of literacy skills. The research focuses on the language used by a group of elementary school children, between 7 and 10 years old, when asked about the role of their body in the learning process. The linguistic material analyzed comes from the opinions of these elementary school children with special difficulties in the development of their reading and writing skills. The data are interpreted and discussed in a Discourse Analysis perspective, as presented in Brazil by Orlandi, and in France by the theoretical contributions of Pecheux. The notion of a human being using the language in an ideological and historical perspective is central in the discussion of the data. The analysis reveals learners subjected to beliefs about learning as being conditioned by a set of mechanical gestures in which the notions of discourse, interaction and the construction of meaning are absent. The implications of such views are discussed in terms of the learning difficulties of the group of students who hold such beliefs about learning. Key words: the human body and the classroom, language, pedagogical practices.

This paper studies everyday telephone conversation closings in the framework of ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis. Through the contributions of Schegloff and Sacks (1973) and Button (1987; 1990), among others, it aims to show some practices used by participants to continue the call, even after first closing cue. The corpus is constituted by data of naturally occurring talk, recorded from a Brazilian family who lives in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, and evidences how the parties, in the Brazilian context, construct social relationships microsequentially. Thus, the study confirms the commonsense notion that finishing a conversation is a delicate issue for the participants, since they can use many practices to continue the conversation between the pre-closing first pair part “ok” and the closing second pair part “bye”. Key words: conversation analysis, telephone everyday conversation, closings .

The aim of this article is to make a reflection of the thesis that power constitutes language use. This thesis was proposed in my doctoral dissertation “ Enonciation and Power: elements for the construction of a theoretical object” and can be summarized in the following syllogism: if power is a concrete, immediate, singular and punctual relationship, if language use itself is an act of intersubjectivity, one can conclude that power constitutes language use. Two different concepts are further developed: power, in the perspective of Bobbio, Foucault and Comte-Sponville, who claim an interdependence of the concepts of power and freedom, and language, in the perspective of Benveniste’s theory of discourse and subjectivity. Key words: language, power, freedom, intersubjectivity, enonciation.

Resumo.

In this article, we propose a discussion on hypertext, reading and meaning, from a linguistic perspective. If hypertext is an “open text”, the reader will be faced with innumerable possibilities of reading and construction of meaning. Where to start? How to proceed after determining the beginning? When to finish the text, if the purpose of hypertext is that the reader “jumps” from text to text? These are questions that are up to the reader to answer, at the moment at which he finds himself in the universe of hypertext. It is important for the reader to know beforehand the space, and method of composition, of hypertext and to produce meanings for the actualized texts. Key words: hypertext, reading, meaning.