Aspects of a controversy: the episode of Por uma vida melhor didactic book

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze how the great media published the event related to the didactic book “Por uma vida Melhor”, from Heloísa Ramos, acquired and distributed by the State Department of Education. The incident had great repercussion: journalists, writers and scholars discussed the subject, a discussion that provoked a controversy between those who defended the ideas presented on the book (distinction between oral language and written language, the linguistic variations) and those who considered it as an encouragement to “bad language performances”. In order to analyze the confrontation, some data was gathered, composed by texts produced in different discourse genres that circulated in great media in the period from May 2011 to July 2011. The theoretical- methodological framework of French discourse conducts the analysis, mainly that one developed by D. Maingueneau. Results indicate that the polemical relationship appears in different dimensions of the analyzed texts.