Palavras em órbita, linguagem sem rumo: a confusão conceitual de linguagem na BNCC

Abstract

Language is a commonly used concept, both in common sense and in academic texts. Due to its intense use, it seems to have gained a dimension whose mentions and uses already have obvious meaning both for those who use it and for those who receive the text. Therefore, using the proposition of Orlandi (2018), who, when analyzing pedagogical awareness focused on research, presents the state of oscillation between abstract studies, which aim to build their own theory, and concrete studies, which collect empirical techniques. In this sense, he suggests that, in order to overcome the dichotomy between abstract pedagogism and practical pedagogism, radical self-criticism is needed, systematically questioning the terms and ideas taken as primitive, building its own theoretical structure. In order to carry out this self-criticism, we have taken the primitive term Language as a basis. Based on the National Common Core Curriculum as an empirical object, since we conceive of an analysis based on microhistory, which allows us to analyze a document as a representative of the totality of a given political and social context, since it would be intrinsically related to that reality, being an expression of it (Rojas, 2012), our research problem is: what is the concept of language for the field of education, represented by the BNCC? Based on the indicative method (Ginzburg, 1989) - through which we examine taking into account clues, emblems and signs - we aim to investigate the document, carrying out direct inquiries into its text, i.e. constant questioning about what is said, confirming the intention of what was said, revealing approximations, confusions, inconsistencies with what was meant, distrusting absences and disappearances, recognizing digressions and parallelisms. As a result, we found terminological inflation around “language”, because associated and correlated terms are derived from it, whether expressions in the plural (multiple or different languages) or adjectives (cinematographic, cartographic, body language), or even terms in semantic approximation (language, reading, literacy, literacy). Terminological confusions that expose a confusing and fragmented document. “Language” was understood to mean language, communication, transfer of information, command, code, symbol, expression, sign, representation, discourse, message. In addition, the meanings given to the terms surrounding “language” revealed a document aligned with neoliberal ideals of education, listing as its pedagogical objective the training of students to meet market needs, making them flexible to the constant demands arising from the reproduction of capital.