Textualidade sincrética em blogs produzidos por estudantes do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This research aimed at studying the text on the computer screen in its syncretic-discursive aspects. The empirical objects consisted in the analysis of blogs produced in pedagogical activities of a project work in hypermedia, in the context of teaching and learning English as a foreign/additional language. The study was theoretically and methodologically based on discursive greimasian semiotics. From the dyad expression/content and the concept of inter-semiotic function, the expression plane of the blogs was analyzed through the conjunction of plastics semiotics and elements of visual design, and the content plan was analyzed at the discursive level of the generative route of signification. The comparison of the observed data encouraged a discussion of the meanings produced and verified the occurrence of semi-symbolism. The recurrence of semi-symbolism confirmed the sincreticity characteristic of the blogs textuality in the hypertext context. The discursive, verbal and nonverbal choices made by the students indicated the convergence of meaning effects and the repetition of the themes and figures listed. The multiplicity of elements found in the construction of the semiotic discourse seems to characterize the syncretic textuality in hypertext environment, so that the verbal language embeds features of the nonverbal language and vice versa. The analysis showed that the textual production in computerized environment requires another conception of text and language education, including digital literacy associated with language literacy in the curricular syllabus of elementary school. The possibilities of hypertext, in its syncretic textuality, showed having not only influenced but also delimited the linguistic-discursive choices made in the context of textual production in hypermedia. Working with hypertext seems to pose challenges to language teaching and school textual practices, as it requires the participants in the educational process to deal with a wider range of communication options, explicated in the categories proposed for the analysis of blogs. Unlike the first developments in the early semiotic theory, hypertext turned semi-symbolism into rule, not into an exception obtained as a result of specific discursive-semiotic choices.