Letramento multimodal crítico: sob a perspectiva de livros didáticos e de professores de inglês e de biologia

Abstract

Considering the multimodal nature of genres (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2006), the study about how the different semiotic resources articulate is essential, in the sense of motivating the development of knowledge about the semiotic resources that constitute genres, that is, critical multimodal literacy (CML). In order to understand how this knowledge is considered in the school context, the objective of this study is to verify (with focus on static imagetic semiotic resources) how textbooks (TBs) and teachers, of English and Biology, recontextualize the concept of CML. This study is based theoretically and methodologically on the Critical Genre Analysis perspective (MOTTA-ROTH, 2008a), with focus on Multimodal Discourse Analysis (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 1996; 2006). The corpus of this research comprehends a) didactic activities of text comprehension and production from two TBs, one of English language (ELTB) (AGA, 2010) and one of Biology TB (BTB) (AMABIS; MARTHO, 2009), offered by PNLD; and b) interview answers from public school teachers, from Santa Maria, that adopt the selected TBs. The study followed two steps, a contextual and a textual step. In the contextual analysis, the investigation of the TBs contexts of production and distribution involved the analysis of documents related to the TBs in search for linguistic exponents that refer to visual semiotic resources. The analysis of the context of consumption comprehended teachers interviews in order to verify to what extent and how CML is approached in classroom by using TBs. In the textual analysis, we analyzed the activities instructions from the selected TBs in order to find linguistic exponents that make reference to static imagetic semiotic resources. Based on this analysis, we classified the activities according to their focus on CML knowledge that is related to the language levels. The results of the contextual analysis show that the need to consider the visual semiotic resources of texts is recognized in the TBs contexts. In the textual analysis, we verified that the ELTB activities reflect, in part, the contextual results once 50% of the activities refer to visual semiotic resources. Differently, in the BTB, these resources are referred by only 20% of the activities. Regarding the types of knowledge of CML referred by the activities from the TBs and the ones suggested by the teachers on the interviews, we identified a divergence in relation to the contexts of production and distribution: while the TBs and the interviews analysis suggest a focus on lexicogrammar and semantics and pragmatics levels, the analysis of the contexts of production and distribution reveals the focus on the ideological level. The ideological perspective, in the context of production and distribution of TBs, derives from the premise that the knowledge developed in class should not be only related to the propositional content of the area (BRASIL, 2006a; 2006b), but should be in service for an informed participation of the students in society. In this sense, this study shows the urgency of reflecting upon the material we use in class, in order to adapt it, especially considering the development of CML.