Imaginary and linguistic policy: meanings about indigenous peoples in official documents

Abstract

This article intended to understand the imaginary in the constitution of the discourse analyzing effects of senses produced on the indigenous subject in official documents, as well as, comprehend how the imaginary impacts on public policies for indigenous school education and encourage initiatives for teaching and valuing indigenous languages. The file of this research encompassed the legislation CNE/CEB nº 14, from 19 of September and by the Resolution CEB nº 3, from 10 of November of 1999; those are about the National Curricular Guidelines for Indigenous School Education. The hypothesis was about the interdiscursive repeatability schemes (IRSs) - used to refute the past and stabilize the present -, contained in the discourse about. Accordingly, by creating a place for this policy and an imaginary place of an indigenous subject, produced a space of tension, generating resonances in relation to the imaginary and, consequently, in relation to the constitution of the indigenous subject and the policies of indigenous school education. As a research hypothesis that the interdiscursive repeatability schemes – used to refute the past and stabilize the present –, in the discourse “about”, by creating a place for this policy and an imaginary place of indigenous subject. Thus, it produces a space of tension, generating resonances in relation to the imaginary and, subsequently, in relation to the constitution of the indigenous subject. The discursive perspective taken understands the subject as split, cleaved and barred by language and works with meaning effects, unveiling that both the incompleteness of the discourse and the subject. From the analysis, the real of the language, the real of the history and the real of the subject person signaled that it was by the imaginary that an indigenous subject was constituted that it is an indefinite mixture, a “between”, a “belongs/no/belongs”. The documents produced an imaginary about the indigenous subject who is neither one nor the other; it is neither the same nor different. It is not an indigenous subject, but it is not a non-indigenous subject either, reverberating on indigenous school education policies.