Subjection and conflict in the constitution of the subject in school grammars' presentation texts in portuguese

Abstract

In this paper I investigate how Portuguese language school grammars claim to incorporate the consequences of the pragmatic turn-out to its prescriptive purposes and to its traditional organization. To reach such aim I analyze discourses, materialized in the presentation texts of this type of grammar, following the lines of Michel Pêcheux’s theoretical-methodological framework of the discourse analysis. Results show that the subjects of such discourses are ideologically affiliated with the discursive formation of the pragmatic turn-out in the teaching of the Portuguese language. In this subjection process, such subjects introduce an identification movement with the form-subject associated with the aforementioned discursive formation, which, in turn, is responsible for the illusion of their identity. However, even though there is a coincidence tendency between discourse subjects and knowledge subjects, there is also room for “failures in the ritual” of such subjection process, establishing a space of conflict instead of uniqueness, and a form-subject also heterogeneous in relation to itself.