The meaning effect of the absence of meaning

the remains of pedagogical discourse in DA’s master thesis

Abstract

The aim is to investigate the emergence of pedagogical discourse in academic writing of dissertations developed within the scope of French Discourse Analysis. This effect consists of the predominance of paraphrase over polysemy, that is, the maintenance of a sedimented form of discourse at the expense of the operation of displacement upon that same discourse. Through two dissertations drawn from the archives of UNICAMP and UFSC, we identified that the irruption of this discursive type suggests a subject who, when writing from the position of a postgraduate student, has their speech constrained by discursive anteriorities that point both to production conditions external to the university and to those unfolding within it. These anteriorities impact the subject's speech, as they encounter difficulty in inscribing themselves in their research process, resulting in a sense effect lacking in meaning, since the appearance of circular saying indicates the difficulty in performing a gesture close to polysemy, that is, in articulating this saying with what was proposed to research. With that said, what is at stake in academic writing that allows for a discourse that constitutes itself as an end in itself rather than something articulated with the object of research?