Tradições discursivas em resenhas acadêmicas: mudanças e permanências entre os séculos XX e XXI

Abstract

This research analyzes traces of changes and permanence traits in book reviews produced between 20th and 21th Century. Therefore, it has three objectives. The first aim is to describe the socio-historical context that engenders the production and circulation of the genre. The second objective is to analyze the thematic content and the rhetorical pattern in order to compare regularities and singularities in the compositional structure of the texts. Our last goal is to identify recurrent lexical items in book reviews and their entanglements with the rhetorical moves and subunits. It adopts an inductive approach and historical-comparative methods. The diachronic analysis comprises a 62-year time continuum divided into three generational phases: a) 1953-1970; b) 1971-2000; e c) 2001-2015. Each phase is represented by 15 texts, accounting 45 samples that were collected in academic journals of Linguistics. This project followed descriptive and explanatory approaches and even using statistical data, we proceeded with a qualitative approach. We find methodological support also in the software AntConc 3.4.3w to discern the most frequent lexical items in each rhetorical move and units. Theoretically, it is based on considerations that raised from sociointeracionist approach of language from Bakhtin Circle, rhetorical studies of genre and the paradigm of Discursive Traditions. With regard to the results identified in each category of analysis, this study led to the identification of some changes in the contextual level, especially as regards the profile of the interlocutors who have interacted through this genre. It was also noticed that it has a line of continuity ensured by the permanence of some communicative purposes. We also found that the thematic content of book reviews covers not only aspects of a particular work, but also express positions on different contextual features. Regarding the compositional structure, it was possible to identify some rhetoric patterns that articulate themselves with specific lexical items. They also have frequencies that oscillate in each generational phase. The graphic, spatial and paratextual configuration, likewise, points to changes that revel new forms to materialize book reviews. These results corroborate to understand that genres fit in the needs and specificities of the historical moments in which they are linked. We hope that these reflections contribute to a larger understanding of the social and diachronic character of genres bringing theoretical and pedagogical implications.