CRENÇAS E ATITUDES SOBRE LÍNGUA E SEU ENSINO NO BRASIL: O DEBATE ACERCA DO “LIVRO DO MEC”

Abstract

In this work, discussions were raised about the Brazilian sociolinguistic reality, starting from the criticisms directed at the book Por uma vida Melhor (Ramos, 2011), which became known as the “MEC book” because it was approved by the PNLD in 2011, to fulfill the general objective of investigating the linguistic opinions and attitudes employed by the book's critics. With this, specific objectives were stipulated: analyze the motivations for such opinions and attitudes; find out what these opinions and attitudes generate in the community about the language and its teaching; specifically the relationship between critics' comments and official education documents. To make the investigations possible, we sought to analyze three comments made to the book by two journalists, a PhD and Educational Psychology, in the light of theorists such as Barcelos (2007); Aguilera and Silva (2014); López Morales (2004); Faraco (2008); Bortoni-Ricardo (2021) and Lucchesi (2015). Considering this is a qualitative, document-based study, we sought to collect, observe, and analyse official documents that govern education in Brazil, such as the BNCC (Brazil, 2017) and the PCNs (Brazil, 1998), so as to substantiate the discussion concerning teaching. Therefore, the analyses were constructed based on the comments made by the critics, who conveyed not only their beliefs about language and its teaching, but also expressed attitudes generated by such beliefs. During the analyses, it was found that the critics of the book presented a confused behaviour regarding the definition of formal and standard norms, as well as preaching the need to homogenise the language in favour of unification and facilitation of verbal interaction processes. Furthermore, it was noted that the comments reaffirmed the discussions proposed by the book that was the target of the debate, when, in fact, they wanted to oppose it. Thus, it was concluded that the school environment, as well as society, still maintain conservative beliefs and attitudes towards language and its teaching and, therefore, need to build new beliefs based on linguistic heterogeneity.