Conectados com a leitura: uma investigação dos significados da literatura no 5º ano do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This case study examines the meanings of literature within an educational context by describing, analyzing and interpreting the interactional events in which participants from the fifth year of schooling of a public school in Belo Horizonte MG took part in. The methodological perspective was oriented by interactional ethnography (CASTANHEIRA, 2010) and by the interpretation of how the events under investigation defined the data (MOITA LOPES, 1994). Hymes (1972) concept of interactional event has revealed itself as primary because it refers to situations of multiple voices, whose fundamental unit for analysis is the semantic contours of participants conversational topics and their roles for the reorganization of the interaction space. This concept informs the way language is seen as a basis for interactional practices as well as their meaning-making. In addition, it is also important to highlight that the concept of interpretation taken as relevant here is primarily descriptive, then analytical, focusing on who participated and where, how and why the interactions took place. The study was conducted having in mind the overarching questions: What are the meanings of literature for the participants of the group under analysis? How and when do the participants read literary texts? In order to answer these questions, I observed 63 classes, from which emerged field notes according to my observations of the teacher interacting with her students in classroom. Likewise, I created event maps which were important for grounding my interpretations of these interactions. I also considered that the interactions that took place in the classroom and that were concerned with the uses the literary texts could highlight the meanings of literature. Stemming from this, I focused the investigation on a specific community, that is, one classroom, and on a daily event of the community named Conectados com a Leitura (Connected with Reading), given that it showed how the participants behaved when they used to read literature, what they used to feel during the interactions, how they interpreted the text, and which meanings they ascribed to the text. All in all, the results demonstrated that mostly the reading styles that emerged from within the interactions were those related to discipline and behavior, rather than those that usually happen when literary texts were at stake. It is important to pinpoint that, although the teacher had tried to motivate students to express their opinions on what they have understood, her emphasis on the informative aspects of the literary texts influenced the way students interpreted the texts. This aspect gave rise to a kind of format for the reading events, which has not created further possibilities for interpreting the literary text as something pleasant, a crucial feature that should characterize the reading process when students read literature. In addition to it, the meaning given to literature by the community under analysis was very peculiar, since the event Conectados com a Leitura had been responsible for the great majority of the interactional events in which literary texts were deemed important. The literary text itself had not been the center of attention, but the event in which multiple readings occurred. It was clear, then, that it is not suffice that the text be literary; it is important that a kind of literary treatment be given to the text, in order for the reading process to gain the aspects of literary reading.