Literacy and Enunciation

bases for a dialogue

Abstract

This work aims to lay the bases for a dialogue between Literacy Studies, especially Academic Literacy Studies, and the field of Enunciative Linguistics, especially Émile Benveniste’s theory of enunciation. Based on a double gap identified in these areas – in the field of Literacy Studies, the lack of an enunciative approach; in the field of Enunciative Studies, the lack of addressing literacy as a subject of studies on enunciation –, this work develops principles and conceptions for an enunciative model of academic literacy. According to this model, the speaker-student constitutes himself as a subject of language in an academic literate world through enunciative relations with his allocutor-teacher and/or allocutor-colleagues, as well as with the cultures of academic writing, thus renewing his relationship with his mother tongue whenever he inserts his discourse in the literate world in order to speak, listen, read, and write both written and oral literate texts. Therefore, this work hopes to contribute to the studies on Literacy and Academic Literacy by formulating a new theoretical explanation for such phenomena; considering the Enunciative Studies approach, by adding literacy and academic literacy among its subjects of investigation; considering mother tongue teaching at the university, by providing a theoretical basis for the practice of producing and comprehending written and oral literate texts.