(Im)possibilidades de tomada da palavra em língua inglesa por alunos da Terceira Idade

Abstract

This research aims at analyzing how the process of taking the floor in the English language is (or is not) carried out in an English Course for Senior Citizens in the city of Uberlândia, which is part of an extension project for the inclusion of these students in the environment of English teaching. Assuming that the teaching-learning process of a language demands that one inscribes oneself in the discourses mediated by it, I believe that this inscription takes place by the insertion of the student in work taking process. This event is regarded as a process, because it is composed of two interrelated conditions: to be taken by the word and to take the floor, since this process corresponds to an identification of the subject to and in the English Language. Starting from the identification processes, it might be possible for the student to be taken by the word, to take the floor and engage in language exchanges. Subjectivity, therefore, is decisive in this process. In the analysis cutouts, I present some mo(vi)ments in which it is possible to identify clues and analyze the effects of student subjectivity emerging during the activity, and the (im)possibility of the taking the floor process. The corpus analyzed is based on the footage of the classes filmed during the fourth edition of the course in the year 2014, developed in the English for the Elderly course, two questionnaires applied to the students, one at the beginning of the course and the other in the end, plus notes taken by me during class in a logbook. The enunciative scenes were analyzed under some notions from freudian and lacanian psychoanalysis and Benveniste's theory of enunciation, using the indiciary paradigm proposed by Ginzburg. The signs of identification to and in the English Language lead me to articulate the concepts of psychoanalysis, while the signs of semantization refer me to the theory of Benveniste's enunciation. From the analytical gesture on the corpus, it was possible to observe that, even in what is considered the most initial level of teaching and learning of the English Language, the emerging of subjectivity during activities is possible; since mo(vi)ments towards taking floor in that language is not restricted to a high level of communicative competence, but is due to possible identifications of the student in and to that language.