Argumentative and expository writing utterances in 9th grade Portuguese textbooks – a discursive-pragmatic perspective

Abstract

This article falls within the field of linguistics applied to teaching, more specifically in the field of writing. It is considered an issue that is relevant, since the assessment of knowledge and learning is carried out, mainly, through written production. The main objective of this text, which is part of a broader project, is to understand to what extent the utterances found in 9th grade Portuguese textbooks, in the extended response construction items (Neves & Ferreira, 2015), help understanding the task(s) to be carried out by the student(s). In this case specifically, the analysis focuses on utterances that invoke knowledge(s) relating to genres concerning exposition and argumentation (Schneuwly & Dolz, 2004; Adam, 1999). The corpus is made up of 9th grade textbooks that cover a greater number of schools in Portugal, the ones most selected by school groups, and, therefore, a greater number of students. The study follows a methodology from the perspective of Discourse Analysis, more specifically a discursive-pragmatic theoretical framework.