The textbook author and the mother tongue teacher in editorial paratexts (1936-1962)

Abstract

In this article, I investigate the ways found by Companhia Editora Nacional to participate in discussions about teacher education between 1930 and 1960, a time when both secondary and higher education were being institutionalized in Brazil. I start from the hypothesis that, by presenting authors of Portuguese language textbooks through graphic-linguistic resources endowed with illocutionary force, the publishing house also established representations of the mother tongue model teacher. My aim is, therefore, to analyze and describe the paratexts used to present the authors of the textbooks and, based on them, establish possible representations of the model teacher. The material includes four textbooks that, during the investigated period, were highlighted in the educational environment: Compêndio de língua portuguesa and Manual de língua portuguesa, by Artur de Almeida Torres; and Português para o ginásio and Português para o colégio, by José Cretella Júnior. As a theoretical framework, I resort to a discursive approach, which recognizes, in the production of meaning in discourse and history, the character of social practice of semiosis and, therefore, the generalized performativity of language. The methodology consists in the description of the paratexts followed by the analysis of the language acts performed through them in the course of the debate on teacher education. The results obtained show that, when presenting its authors, Nacional sometimes delimited a select set of self-taught teachers, legitimized by traditional educational institutions and intellectual groups; and sometimes it claimed the need for licensed teachers, legitimized by official and bureaucratic instances.