O inglês prêt-à-porter da mídia: representações ou verdades nos discursos das propagandas de escolas de idiomas.

Abstract

This dissertation is based on the premise that the English language is offered in language courses as a prêt-à-porter merchandising, which through media disclosure seems to establish in the consumer a sense of desire for the place of the Other. The intention is to contextualize and discuss the functioning of language schools’ advertisements concerning its representation of English language and the teachers. The interest is in investigating how the discourses of the current phase of globalization, characterized mainly by the technological dissemination of communication, contribute to identify the place of the teacher in such advertisements and what senses of the current Brazilian educational scenario are possible to mobilize before these discussions. This study is based in the work of Lipovetsky (2002, 2007, 2015), especially regarding the concepts of hypermodernity, hyperconsumption and paradoxical happiness. The theoretical contributions of Kumaravadivelu (2006) regarding the perspective of Global English is presented as well as the studies of Bauman (2004) and Hall (2006) on identity in postmodernity. The theoretical and methodological approach used in this research relies on the precepts of French Discourse Analysis, especially in authors such as Pêcheux (1997; 2002) and Foucault (1989). As for the methodological procedure adopted, first a pre-selection of the advertisements by using google was made. Due to the great deal of ads showing various contents that weren’t entirely relevant to this research, it was necessary to elaborate some guiding criteria to facilitate the delimitation of the data that would serve for analysis. Once the final selection was made, the ads were grouped according to two categories of analysis. The analysis shows that the discourse propagated through the advertising is that of the rapid learning of the English language, which is shown as something that happens instantly just by being part of the disclosed institution. This fact allows us to infer that the representation of the teacher, in advertisements, appears as an adjunct element serving as to reinforce didactic material and the image of institution itself. The weakening effect of the pedagogical discourse is an evidence of the conflictive reality in teacher training.