The teacher and his illusion of “mastery”: a discourse analysis of the school pedagogical practice in the teaching of the Portuguese

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a reflection supported by the French Discourse Analysis about the meaning of “having the mastery of the classroom” and “having the mastery of the content”. Thereunto, we start from the analysis of discursive sequences which depict the school pedagogical practice in the teaching of the mother tongue, seeking to understand how the teacher-subjetc’s two specific ways of illusion, the illusion of the subject and the illusion of mastery of the content, contribute to the maintenance of the subject in the position of a mere enunciator (Orlandi, 2012). As a result, we observed that both the teacher and the student stand as mere enunciators/ repeaters of the crystallized and traditional school pedagogical discourse that is preserved by the authoritarian discourse. With this reflection, we hope to provide the thinking of ways to escape from this regulation of the subject and the language.