Memories of an academic course

an analysis of enunciantion’s actor of academic autobiography

Abstract

The academic autobiography seems to be a privileged object for the examination of images and values concerning performance in the Brazilian academic environment. When the professor-researcher writes an academic autobiography, he draws up his professional and intellectual course as a reply to meet an institutional demand. A lot of academic contests at Brazilian universities ask applicants to write such a text genre. Taking this into consideration, the aim of this work is to analyze the production of enunciator-applicant’s image. This work is based on Discini (2003, 2015) and Fiorin’s (2004, 2015) proposals for the study of enunciator’s actor within the Greimasian semiotics scope. By comparing texts of different areas and courses at the Universidade de São Paulo, we verify their differences and similarities in the uses of textual and discursive procedures for the construction of the enunciator’s actor. As a result, we found the image of a bold, innovative, competitive and cooperative professor-researcher in the Biological memorials and of a critical, creative and slightly deviant professor-researcher in the Humanities memorials.