A discursive analysis of reading representations in students’ speeches from Adult Education at UFSCar

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of reading representations shared among students from EJA (Educação de Jovens e Adultos, also known as Adult Education) at UFSCar (Federal University of São Carlos), having as base data obtained in a questionnaire about what they read and how they read it. The objective of analyzing that data was to infer from their answers information about their reading practices and their discursive representations on what is reading, what it is to be a reader, what is the importance of books, etc. The analysis describes some of the discursive representations that guide those answers, in a way that it is possible to understand which discourses about reading constitute those students’ imaginary about the practice of reading. In order to do that, the first stage of this work consisted on the formulation and application of the questionnaire to obtain relevant data according to our objectives. Next, we have evaluated the answers, having as foundation some principles of French Discourse Analysis and Cultural History of Reading, to understand which discourses constitute the imaginary about reading among those students and which reading practices they declare to perform, in the light of this imaginary. The results show that, although the students from EJA-UFSCar claim to not read books that are formally and institutionally considered part of a cultural canon nor declare to perform more traditional and prestigious reading practices, they share quite positive representations of what reading means and declare themselves as actual readers, even if this role does not coincide with the model of a good reader they described in the questionnaire. The variance between the self-claimed practices of this community and those that are imagined by them must be focus of their teachers’ attention, as a means to fill in the gap between idealized reading practices that are not consistent with their daily practices, and their actual social conditions of reading.

Keywords: reading practices, discursive representations of the reader, Discourse Analysis, Cultural History, Adult Education.