The Academic Discourse of English Teachers on Internationalization During the ABRALITEC International Seminar

ABSTRACT

This study set out to analyze the academic discourse on internationalization as deployed by English teachers who took part in Seminário Internacional da Associação Brasileira de Professores de Língua Inglesa da Rede Federal de Ensino Básico, Técnico e Tecnológico (2020) [2020 International Seminar of the Brazilian Association of English Language Teachers in the Federal Network of Basic, Technical and Technological Education]. Grounded in Dialogic Discourse Analysis, we built a corpus with five oral presentation summaries extracted from the conference’s book of abstracts. We found that internationalization was predominantly associated with learning English but less strongly regarded as an institutional imperative. Our findings were thus indicative of dialogic relationships amongst academic, theoretical, official and advertising discourses. In the arena where opinions meet, there emerged two mutually complementing perspectives on internationalization efforts: one focused on the role of integral education and another focused on institutional conformation against an international backdrop.

KEYWORDS:
Utterance; Academic Discourse; Internationalization; English Teaching; Dialogic Discourse Analysis

RESUMO

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar o discurso acadêmico de professores de inglês sobre a internacionalização no contexto do Seminário Internacional da Associação Brasileira de Professores de Língua Inglesa da Rede Federal de Ensino Básico, Técnico e Tecnológico (2020). A partir da Análise Dialógica do Discurso, é analisado um corpus de cinco resumos de comunicações orais publicados no caderno de resumos da terceira edição do evento. A análise dos dados aponta para a internacionalização relacionada, predominantemente, à aprendizagem da língua inglesa, e, menos frequentemente, a uma necessidade institucional, revelando relações dialógicas entre o discurso acadêmico, o teórico, o oficial e o publicitário. No palco de encontro de opiniões, duas perspectivas sobre a internacionalização se complementam: uma voltada para a função da educação integral e outra voltada para a conformação institucional em um cenário internacional.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Enunciado; Discurso acadêmico; Internacionalização; Ensino de inglês; Análise dialógica do discurso

Introduction

The debate on the internationalization of education has gained momentum across various fields of knowledge in Brazil, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics. Owing to the circulation of dedicated issues by specialized periodicals (Morosini, 2017; Almeida, 2020; Carvalho; Costa Júnior; Lima, 2022), academics have given voice to their reflections on international expansion efforts, especially those led by higher learning institutions. This emphasis has often called into question the very definition of internationalization while establishing connections between foreign language teaching and international cooperation agendas. As a product of the dialogue between mutually complementary concepts, internationalization is now regarded as an institutional responsibility across Brazil’s Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e Tecnológica [Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education] (RFEPCT, in the Portuguese acronym) (Lima, 2021b). In tandem with nationwide directives, the debate has relied on experts from both federal and state-level institutions in all five regions of the country, such as the Federal University of Pará, the Federal Institute of Maranhão, the Federal Institute of Brasília, the Federal University of São Carlos, the State University of Western Paraná and several others.

It should be noted that the growing intelligibility of internationalization among linguistics scholars has not been solely a result of dedicated scientific publications. From the outset, Brazilian researchers have tackled the phenomenon from an array of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Early efforts are distinctly inculcated in the discursive memory of Brazilians as having started with Ciência Sem Fronteiras [Science Without Borders Program], which promoted student mobility and exchange opportunities with a view to internationalizing science and technology advancements. In modern days, internationalization efforts are still strongly associated with student mobility, linguistic education as well as a number of interconnected categories (Finardi; Porcino, 2014; Finardi; Santos; Guimarães, 2016; Pereira; Silva, 2021; Amorim; Finardi, 2022; Guimarães; Silva, 2022; among others).

The Associação Brasileira de Professores de Língua Inglesa da Rede Federal de Ensino Básico, Técnico e Tecnológico [Brazilian Association of English Teachers in the Federal Network of Basic, Technical and Technological Education] (ABRALITEC, in the Portuguese acronym) has managed to further the ideological debate on internationalization by holding systematic talks, roundtables and research conferences since its first International Seminar in 2018. The association’s continued efforts at disseminating the discussion have conveyed the importance of creating teacher associations and organizing events centered on linguistics and foreign language teaching - a cause espoused by Moita Lopes (1999) for over two decades - since the intellectual output of such gatherings can be considered a proper gauge for construction of knowledge in a given field.

In light of the foregoing, this study set out to analyze the academic discourse of English teachers about internationalization as deployed during the 2020 ABRALITEC International Seminar. Rooted in Dialogic Discourse Analysis (DDA), our corpus consisted of five oral presentation summaries (abstracts) published in the book of abstracts of the seminar’s third edition, which was hosted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event has explicitly attempted to further the debate by gathering those participants with an interest in internationalization under the Thematic Category entitled Língua Inglesa e Internacionalização e English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) [English and Internationalization and English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI)].

This paper is organized as follows: the next chapter provides a review of the dialogic approach espoused by DDA, which was deployed to analyze the discourse of the English teachers; the Results and Discussion chapter contains the actual examination of the discursive corpus; lastly, the final segment of the paper reports our conclusions, which are expected to contribute to the overall discursive exchange about internationalization in scholarly circles.

1 Dialogic Approach to Analyzing the Discourse of English Teachers

Brait (2016) explains that Dialogic Discourse Analysis may be understood as an approach to examining discursive corpora based on the works of Vološinov, Medvedev, Bakhtin and other scholars from the early 20th-century multidisciplinary group of Soviets who wrote about a variety of subjects, including language-related problems. In Brazil, the theoretical-methodological framework of DDA began to take form in the late 1960s, upon first contact with the works of the Bakhtin Circle, and is now regarded as a consolidated approach to discourse analysis (Brait; Pistori, 2020; Brait, 2021; Boenavides, 2022; among others).

Taking this into account, this article focuses on utterance, as part of a set of key concepts that can guide a dialogic posture in front of a discursive corpus in dialogic analysis. It is recognized, therefore, that the utterance, considered the primary data of linguistic analysis and Human Sciences in general (Bakhtin, 1986b),¹ takes precedence when a dialogic posture is adopted for the analysis of the academic discourse of the English language teacher through of the abstracts of oral communication with which the subjects intend to participate in a specialized academic event, debating a theme that they considered relevant - internationalization.

Brait and Melo (2005) stress the importance of the utterance for language studies, especially enunciative and discursive studies. In this context, the concept of utterance plays a central role in the notion of language adopted by Bakhtin and the Circle, since it allows for language to be understood from a concurrent social, historical and cultural point of view. Brait and Melo (2005, p.67) also note that utterances represent the entirety of the interactive process, “the verbal and the non-verbal aspects of a given situation that are, at the same time, part of a larger historical context both in regard to what preceded this one utterance (i.e. other utterances, discourses, subjects, etc.) as well as to what the utterance projects into the future.”²

Moreover, the concept of utterance seems to have established an interrelationship with the notion of language, here presupposed as discursive interaction (Vološinov, 1973).³ This perspective entails that the utterance is the actual unit of the discursive flow. i.e., it is the social realization of discursive interaction, the reality of language wherein every utterance is responding to something and is oriented towards a response to itself, thereby becoming one link in the uninterrupted chain of speech performances. Every utterance is constructed “between two socially organized persons and, in the absence of a real addressee, an addressee is presupposed in the person, so to speak, of a normal representative of the social group to which the speaker belongs” (Vološinov, 1973, p.85).⁴ As a product of social interaction, utterances must be examined by contemplating dialogue in the broad sense, i.e. as any given discursive communication, because every speech performance is dialogical in nature (by responding to something, refuting something, confirming something and/or complementing other speeches) and cannot be separated from its ideological content, thereby participating “in ideological colloquy of large scale” (Vološinov, 1973, p.95).⁵

That is why, as the actual units of the flow of language, it is paramount to understand the historical and social contexts that ensure the material conditions under which utterances are produced, circulated and received. Vološinov (1973)⁶ contends that each utterance, individual and unrepeatable, carries meaning that is unique to itself (i.e. it has a singular and determined signification), and expresses the concrete historical situation that engendered the utterance, which has been termed the theme of the utterance. Meaning in its turn refers to the technical realization of the theme or “all those aspects of the utterance that are reproducible and self-identical in all instances of repetition” (Vološinov, 1973, p.100, emphasis in original).⁷ The theme of an utterance includes both the linguistic forms and the extraverbal aspects of the situation. These indivisible aspects make up the utterance and likewise offer an evaluation, which can be determined by its immediate situation or by ephemeral circumstances.

Bakhtin (1986a)⁸ notes that language is realized by means of utterances engendered by subjects involved in specific realms of human activity. Every utterance has a function, be it scientific, technical, quotidian, etc. In this way, “speech can exist in reality only in the form of concrete utterances of individual speaking people, speech subjects” (BAKHTIN, 1986a, p.71).⁹ Any fully fledged utterance reflects/refracts the position of the speaker on the referentially semantic content of that verbal performance, which in turn establishes a relationship between utterance and speaker. This is to say that each utterance has an expressive element to it, referred to as intonation or evaluative attitude, since every utterance is to some extent responding to previous utterances, building upon them in some form (by agreeing, disagreeing, disputing, rejecting, complementing, making assumptions, etc.).

Bakhtin (1986a)¹⁰ also explains that any given utterance is constituted by the object of its speech and by the preceding (response) and subsequent (address) links in the chain of speech communion, thereby reflecting/refracting the active responsive position assumed by the speaker in relation to other participants in the exchange. The utterance concentrates both on its own object as well as on the other’s speech, seeing as it always responds to others while taking into account the addressee’s responsive attitudes, as it “is impossible to determine its position without correlating it with other positions” (BAKHTIN, 1986a, p.91).¹¹

Upon assuming a dialogic attitude to language, any attempt to study its use must take into consideration the many spheres of human activity since, as argued by Bakhtin (1986a, p.xvi, emphasis in original),¹² “[...] each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances,” which the Russian scholar termed speech genres. This relative stability of types of utterances has made it possible for humans to communicate and analyze all kinds of discourse over the years, as noted by Boenavides (2022), hence an indicator of how productive Bakhtinian studies persist to be in modern times. Furthermore, according to Bakhtin (1986a),¹³ it is the change of speech subjects that frames the utterance, since the completeness of each utterance conveys that the speaker has said everything s/he wished to say under those circumstances, in a given moment and context. In other words, as the unit of analysis, utterances are ensured this criterion of finality (materialized via the change of speech subjects during an exchange), which defines the boundaries of each utterance as a chunk of discursive communication. Such a perspective allows one to accept the presupposition that “every word brings with it socio-discursive marks of spheres, of situations which, in confluence, constitute their own meaning, or their effects of meaning, thereby organically integrating the word with the entire process of interaction and with the sphere of human activity to which it belongs” (Pereira; Brait, 2020, p.129).¹⁴

As argued before (Lima, 2022), the dialogic conception of utterance is an essential one in treating what we have termed the academic discourse of English teachers, here assumed to comprise at least two other types of discourse, namely: i) theoretical discourse (the theories and concepts with which subjects communicate in the scientific sphere), deployed for the concretization of scientific activity; and ii) official discourse, commonly detected in the everyday professional affairs of English teachers: the laws, decrees, ordinances, guidelines, institutional documents, course outlines and other materials to which teachers respond when carrying out and/or reporting their professional duties. It was based on this hypothesis that earlier studies (Lima, 2021a; Carneiro; Lima, 2022; Lima, 2022) delved into how English teachers have contributed to the ideological debate on pedagogical matters (respectively, by discussing language education in public schools, examining the remote teaching of English, and evaluating certain academic experiences as successful), and established certain relationships between academic discourse and other types of discourse in the scientific and professional spheres. Those discourses may be identified by presupposing what Vološinov (1973, p.119)¹⁵ referred to as the “dynamic interrelationship of these two factors, the speech being reported (the other person’s speech) and the speech doing the reporting (the author’s speech),” which reiterates the dialogical nature of every discourse, which in turn can only exist in the interrelationship that reflects/refracts the mutual orientation between the speech subjects who are socially organized in a specific cultural setting. In addition, one should account for the possibility that every speech performance, as a party to the large-scale ideological discussion (i.e. upon establishing interrelationships with other speeches, “[...] retains its own constructional and semantic autonomy while leaving the speech texture of the context incorporating it perfectly intact” (Vološinov, 1973, p.115).¹⁶ In the words of Bakhtin:

Our speech, that is, all of our utterances (including creative works), is filled with others’ words, varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of “our-own-ness,” varying degrees of awareness and detachment. These words of others carry with them their own expression, their own evaluative tone, which we assimilate, rework, and re-accentuate (Bakhtin, 1986a, p.89).¹⁷

By corroborating that it is through studies of speech that language can be examined in its entirety, Bakhtin (1984)¹⁸ delimits dialogic relationships as the proper object of investigation, one of an extralinguistic nature, further arguing that every instance of language use, in whatever sphere, is impregnated with dialogic relationships. He likewise contends that the study of discourse and dialogic relationships becomes feasible when the speaker assumes an evaluative stance towards the utterance and thereby wills it into existence. Bakhtin (1984)¹⁹ also refers to language use as the “life of language,” illustrating this concept by proposing a typology of the situations in which language is used: everyday life, practical life, scientific life, artistic life, and so forth. These writings, too, seem to support scrutiny of the academic discourse used by English teachers from a dialogical perspective: the speaker must be personified in his/her utterances by assuming a stance in relation to others’ speeches in the scientific sphere. Moreover, the Russian author also explains that dialogic relationships are possible both between utterances and between any significant parts of the utterance. An isolated word, for example, if interpreted as a sign of the semantic position of another, if the other’s voice is heard in it, may be part of a dialogic relationship. This is yet another way for dialogic relationships to make themselves present within utterances.

Taking the above conceptions into consideration, it should also be noted that, as explained by Rohling (2014), DDA studies invariably accommodate the researcher’s own convictions and experiences during the selection and analysis of a given object of study. This study was then justifiably motivated by the author’s own professional experience (as English teacher and head of international affairs) as well as by his continued involvement in the debates held at ABRALITEC seminars since 2018. The author has likewise advocated that internationalization is an institutional responsibility of the Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e Tecnológica [Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education] (RFEPCT), seeing it as inseparable from integral education, research and academic outreach efforts, and as a fundamental principle of the network’s administrative agendas, decentralization policy and social impact (Lima, 2021b).

The teachers’ academic discourse about internationalization was analyzed using oral communication abstracts extracted from the third International Seminar’s book of abstracts. This edition was held in an online format due to the coronavirus pandemic. Also noteworthy is the fact that ABRALITEC was created in 2017 for the purpose of bringing together Language and Literature teachers active in Federal Institutes, Federal Centers for Technological Education, the Colégio Pedro II and federally sponsored Military Schools. The organization’s foremost objective was to establish itself as a privileged venue for discussions germane to English teaching and learning in the federal education network.

There are at least two defining features of the participants’ career descriptions which warrant attention. The first has to do with the assortment of tasks that federally employed faculty are expected to carry out, which includes education, research, outreach as well as administrative activities. Contributing to the internationalization debate under the auspices of ABRALITEC is thus a direct response to the prerogative of developing research activities: participation in scientific events, research presentations, publications, and so on. The second is that federally employed teachers are usually involved in various types of course offerings, levels and modalities: technology and engineering programs, teacher education programs, professional & secondary education and/or in postgraduate degree programs. As a consequence, their attitudes towards internationalization are built upon complex and diverse professional experiences, which often extend beyond the classroom. In fact, some faculty may temporarily step away from teaching roles and move to entirely administrative positions. As the speech object of these subjects, internationalization “becomes the arena where his opinions meet those of his partners (in a conversation or dispute about some everyday event) or other viewpoints, world views, trends, theories, and so forth (in the sphere of cultural communication)” (Bakhtin, 1986a, p.94).²⁰

The third ABRALITEC International Seminar was held in November of 2020, centered on the theme: abordagens críticas no ensino de língua e literaturas anglófonas na Rede Federal de Educação em uma sociedade polarizada: perspectivas, embates e resistências [Critical Approaches in the Teaching of English and English-Language Literatures in the Federal Network of Education in a Polarized Society: Perspectives, Conflicts and Resistances]. The conference hosted various talks, roundtables, workshops, as well as oral and poster presentations; with the abstracts of all presented papers made available in a separate volume (Araújo-Silva; Costa; Squinca, 2020). As with previous editions, the oral presentations (referred to in Portuguese as oral communications - comunicações orais) were grouped under Thematic Categories. Speakers wishing to discuss internationalization convened in the category Língua Inglesa e Internacionalização e English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI), which included six summaries which were published in the event’s book of abstracts. However, one of the abstracts was left out of the corpus as it was not written by an English teacher, but rather by a science teaching student at the postgraduate level who researched English as the international language of science. Of the five remaining abstracts, four were written and published in Portuguese and one was written and published in English. As seen below, each abstract was assigned an alphanumeric identifier (R1-R5) to facilitate discussion of the data.

Table 1
Identification and titles of the abstracts comprising the research corpus

IDENTIFIER	ABSTRACT TITLE
R1	English language immersion and design thinking: contributions and challenges
R2	Centro de Línguas do IFSP: democratização do acesso à aprendizagem de línguas e espaço de formação docente (The IFSP Language School: democratization of language learning and teacher training opportunities)
R3	A internacionalização no CEPAE: explorando experiências interculturais entre Brasil e EUA (Internationalization at CEPAE: exploring intercultural experiences between Brazil and the U.S.)
R4	Coil on biographies: um projeto internacional de interação cultural e desenvolvimento linguístico por intermédio da aprendizagem colaborativa (Coil on biographies: an international cultural interaction and language development project made possible by collaborative learning)
R5	O trabalho com EMI na Internacionalização: da sigla à episteme em sala de aula (EMI in internationalization efforts: from abbreviation to episteme in the classroom)

• Source: Created by the author using data available in Araújo-Silva, Costa and Squinca (2020).

Our analysis procedures abided by the methodologically based order for the study of language, as posited by Vološinov (1973):²¹ analysis of the forms and types of verbal interaction in connection with their concrete conditions; analysis of the forms of particular utterances, of particular speech performances, as elements of a closely linked interaction; analysis of language forms in their usual linguistic presentation.

The next chapter discusses the results of the dialogic analysis of the five abstracts, published in Chapter 4 - Língua Inglesa e Internacionalização e English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI), pp.48-52, of the Seminário Internacional da ABRALITEC [International Seminar] book of abstracts. Only the identifiers (R1-R5) are referenced, not their (co)authors. So as to comply with the page limit imposed on this paper, only excerpts from the full abstracts could be transcribed. The fragments elected for closer examination were so chosen due to being more representative for the discussion, and are given in parentheses and/or put between quotation marks. The second part of the analysis contains two full abstracts, one published in English and one in Portuguese. This was done in order to provide examples of the specificity of the dialogic analysis we set out to accomplish. Both full abstracts more explicitly demonstrate the discursive heterogeneity the study set out to explore. The choice was made to present the Portuguese-language abstract first, as this is the language in which this paper was originally written.

2 Results and Discussion

The excerpts that follow relate to the actual conditions of production and circulation of abstracts by participants in an academic event dedicated to addressing internationalization. The specialized academic community - ABRALITEC, in this case - periodically issues calls for papers, inviting researchers to present their work in the Seminário Internacional while emphasizing that federal education teachers from RFEPCT are welcome to submit their research for consideration. The actual wording of the calls states that (English) teachers from other career paths are also invited to submit papers, with the use of parentheses suggesting that professionals who teach subjects other than English may participate in the seminar. This policy of non-exclusion often welcomes works that do not reflect the discourse of English teachers, as mentioned earlier, seeing as one of the six abstracts in the Categoria temática [Thematic Category] did not make it to the final corpus for representing the discourse of “an MA student researcher in teaching sciences.”²² The five remaining abstracts were all noted to entertain dialogic relationships with the calls issued by the seminar organizers, as well as with the interests and prior experiences of these speech subjects in their everyday professional affairs, given that the teachers reported their considerations in response to a call by the academic community.

Upon examination of the more immediate context of interaction, it became clear that, by submitting an abstract for consideration, the English teacher is initially responding to the call’s submission guidelines: no less than 150 and no more than 250 words, including an introduction/justification, objectives, literature review/theoretical framework, methodological procedures, and results (partial or otherwise). Once the criteria are met, the abstract is reviewed by a designated scientific committee. If accepted, the abstract will make up the event’s book of abstracts, thereby participating in the wider ideological debate on internationalization. Also involved in the discussion are the English teachers in that same thematic category, other teachers, attendees, readers of the book of abstracts (available on the seminar’s web page), as well as the author and presumed readers of this paper, among others.

By making a unique contribution to the speech genre of abstract, taking into account these particular conditions of production, especially the compulsory requirements of the first interaction between the teacher and the reviewer who will either accept or reject the abstract, we argue that the English teacher is building their text in a synthetic fashion. Though the linguistic requirements allow considerable flexibility in terms of word count (150-250), all five abstracts behave in a more stable fashion, approximating the maximum limit (R1 = 250 words; R2 = 247 words; R4 = 248 words; R5 = 247 words), with abstract R3 exceeding it at 267 words. In spite of not complying with event requirements, R3 was accepted by the participants in the more immediate discursive interaction. Such an allowance by the scientific committee may have been motivated by the quantitatively inexpressive engagement of teachers with internationalization as a research theme, considering that very few proposals about the issue were submitted to the event’s third edition. According to Bakhtin, there are clear indications, from the very first moments, of how exceptionally important the role of the addressee (the scientific committee) is for the constitution of an utterance since, from its inception, “the utterance is constructed while taking into account possible responsive reactions, for whose sake, in essence, it is essentially created” (Bakhtin, 1986a, p.94).²³

The analysis found that internationalization is predominantly associated with the learning of English (R1, R3, R5) and less frequently regarded as an institutional necessity (R2, R4). This data is indicative of the relationship between the utterance and the speaking subject, author of the utterance (Bakhtin, 1986a).²⁴ In the majority of the cases under examination, the utterance was authored by the English teacher who advocates in favor of language learning as a driver of internationalization, ascribing value to his/her own professional practice, while being authored less often by (possibly) a departmental head, who spearheads internationalization efforts for the purpose of responding to institutional needs. These diverging viewpoints emerge from the complex array of experiences that arise from the subjects’ career plans, as stated before: federally employed teachers allot some of their weekly hours to several out-of-classroom tasks, and may in some cases choose to work as full-time administrative officials.

The learning of English was mostly associated with language immersion contexts, exchange program opportunities and English as a Medium of Instruction - (respectively, R1, R3, R5), which suggests that the institutional role of English teachers is more closely related to language instruction than it is to discussing and/or enacting institutional policies. In their turn, the other two abstracts seemed to regard internationalization as an institutional demand, supporting this viewpoint with the statements “Considering the necessity of having the Federal Institute of São Paulo play an impactful role in the global scenario”²⁵ (R2) - and aligned with changes in society, “In face of the demands and challenges in globalization, internationalization has played an important role in higher education institutions that are keeping pace with societal changes”²⁶ (R4). Furthermore, the academic discourse employed by the teachers briefly concedes that internationalization is linked to student mobility and exchange opportunities - “by stimulating studies and research projects involving academic mobility” and “exchange programs”²⁷ (R2 and R3, respectively). This diversity of themes points to the current complexity of the internationalization debate, unlike the earlier days of the Science Without Borders program, once termed “the first hour of internationalization in Brazil,” when the phenomenon was mostly regarded as the promotion of student exchange and mobility opportunities. The data indicates that the debate has expanded to include language learning, seen as a means to complement or facilitate mobility and exchange experiences, in addition to the institutional policies governing internationalization.

The teachers constructed their discourses either by focusing on classroom experiences and practices, which suggests dialogic relationships between utterances in the scientific and professional spheres, or by associating it with an institutional project that prescribes measurable indicators of international standing (for instance, the number of students participating in mobility programs), hence attesting to the complex and multidimensional nature of academic discourse. In this arena where opinions meet (Bakhtin, 1986a), ²⁸ our analysis detected at least two complementary perspectives on internationalization. The first one is more inclusive, focusing on the role of integral education: to facilitate learning opportunities and provide students with a broader array of personal and professional experiences in different spheres of human activity. This vantage point becomes more explicit when the academic discourse about internationalization is authored by a teacher - who is more focused on the language learning process, considering mobility opportunities to a lesser extent - but integrates it with other experiences. The second, less inclusive than the first, preoccupies itself with institutional conformation in an international setting governed by economic powers, which in turn prescribe rankings and preach meritocracy as the means to achieve higher ratings. In this case, international mobility becomes an end in and of itself, one that responds to the globalization discourse.

The analysis also revealed the frequency with which the teachers’ academic discourse maintained relationships with other types of speech performances. Dialogic relationships were detected within the sphere of scientific activity itself (theoretical discourse), but also with the sphere of professional practice (official discourse) and other areas of human activity, presupposing interrelationships with utterances from wider contexts of production and circulation of discourses (advertising discourse). The frequency of each relationship is expressed in percentages below, considering that the five items comprising the corpus = 100%.

Table 2
Detected frequencies of the discourses constituting the academic discourse of English teachers on internationalization

DISCOURSE	FREQUENCY	ABSTRACTS
Theoretical	80%	R1, R3, R4, R5
Advertising	60%	R1, R2, R4
Official	40%	R2, R3

As seen above, the abstracts were mostly constituted via relationships with theoretical discourse (R1, R3, R4, R5), typical of the scientific world, and advertising discourse (R1, R2, R4), by announcing results with a positive evaluative emphasis without actually presenting them, which failed to comply with formal requirements (submission guidelines) and functioned as an invitation for audiences to read the entire paper. Earlier studies (Lima, 2021; 2022) have shown that the theoretical and official discourses are presumed to constitute utterances produced and circulated by English teachers in the sphere of academic activity. Nevertheless, the frequent presence of advertising discourse in the corpus ran counter to expectations created by the very prescriptive norms which ensured the participation of English teachers in this discursive interaction. Event guidelines clearly dictate that all abstracts must list the researchers’ findings, even if only partial (“Abstracts must contain the following elements: [...] results (partial or final)”).²⁹ Once again, this dissent indicates that the academic discourse of the English teacher responds to normative discourse - i.e. the prescribed requirements of the international seminar - by failing to comply with it. At any rate, the participants in the more immediate discursive interaction legitimized this breach of regulations, which suggests lower stability in the constitution of this utterance, as of yet unaddressed by prescriptive discourse.

In the analyzed examples, theoretical discourse was presented through citations of other authors for the purposes of: i) introducing a premise - “Research has shown that students in language immersion contexts develop their language and intercultural skills and also learn content knowledge from other subjects (Cheng et al., 2009; Marian et al., 2013)” (R1); ii) justifying a methodological procedure - “Given the complexity of our object of study, the choice to carry out a qualitative, interpretative research was considered a productive one for understanding and interpreting the use of EMI as a social construct in a context of language use”³⁰ (Bortoni-Ricardo, 2011) (R5); iii) prescribing educational guidelines - “According to Rajagopalan (2006) [...] language teaching must”³¹ (R3); and iv) distinguishing the reflections proposed therein - “Dafouz & Smit (2016); Macaro et al. (2016); Im and Kim (2015); Norton and Toohey (2011) all made pertinent contributions to the didactic-pedagogical characterization of this study”³² (R5).

Moreover, though at a lower frequency, theoretical discourse was also deployed by referencing a concept (or the name thereof) - “Design Thinking (DT)” (R1); “Internationalization at Home (IaH) [...] COIL (Collaborative online international learning)” (R4), “EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction)”³³ (R5) - with a view to contextualizing a topic or justifying procedures used in the research. In one abstract only, theoretical discourse was deployed by referencing the field of production of knowledge, but even here this was done to presuppose an understanding of language - “This study concurs with Applied Linguistics insofar as it regards language as a social practice in native or second language contexts”³⁴ (R5).

Based on the above considerations, we argue that the dialogic relationship between academic and theoretical discourse was one of conformity. By introducing a premise, justifying a procedure, prescribing teaching tenets, etc., and using assertions and adjectives like “productive” and “pertinent,” the English teachers mobilized knowledge produced earlier in the scientific arena and were in agreement with that discourse. Bakhtin himself argues that “one may agree or disagree (partially or completely)” with scientific statements (Bakhtin, 1986a, p.76), ³⁵ but that was not the case here, as all of the abstracts conveyed a relationship of concurrence and perhaps even subordination to theoretical discourse, with the deducible intent of validating the researchers’ viewpoints. As a consequence, the growing scientific production about international expansion may cause positions of dissent or complementation to become even less apparent in academic discourse, contrary to what happens when English teachers engender utterances about a different kind of speech object - their own experiences - as theoretical discourse is employed in such cases mostly to establish complementarity with those utterances, as shown in a previous study (Lima, 2021a).

As for advertising discourse, its deployment was clear from the positive evaluative emphasis given to the research results, which served the purpose of enticing readers to consume the full papers. Advertising is known to be a complex structure whose main objective is the sale of a product or service. However, it has been acknowledged that adverts are also deployed for such purposes as disseminating information, giving warnings, etc. (Rennie, 2020). In this way, the abstracts did not present results objectively, as prescribed by conference regulations, but instead behaved like announcements thereof. Nuances of expressive intonation were distinguishable in an expression whose signification is invariably positive - the contributions - and in an adjective which complements this evaluation in a more explicit fashion - “important contributions” - as observed in the following excerpts: “The results revealed the contributions of combining DT and language immersion to the development of learners’ language and critical thinking skills” (R1); “As a result, the project was noted to have made important contributions to the participants’ linguistic and personal spheres of activity”³⁶ (R4).

Therefore, by announcing their results, namely, the data stemming from the experiment of combining two theoretical-methodological perspectives (R1), and linguistic and personal information about the research participants (R4), these abstracts presume future utterances and establish dialogic relationships with the full manuscript, which might see publication in the annals of the International Seminar at a different time and space. Furthermore, in one of the summaries (R2), this presumed future is marked in a more objective manner through the use of the simple future tense (“we will present [...], describe [...], share [...], discuss”), which normally signifies the discussion of things or events that are yet to happen. In such cases, rather than presenting results, the abstract promises them, as seen in the following excerpt: “During this presentation, we will present the manner in which CeLin was structured, describe the efforts led by the Center, share theoretical-methodological knowledge about the pedagogical practices developed by teachers and teachers-in-training, as well as discuss some of the existing challenges”³⁷(R2).

The dialogic relationship with advertising is established in a subtle manner, since the invitation to read the full paper does not require the disbursement of funds from an addressee interested in the research. Still, we argue that such an amalgamation of discourses warrants attention because high-impact journals often make abstracts available at no charge to readers but will only provide the full article upon payment of a fee. This effectively constitutes the sale of a product (scientific knowledge), the context in which these dialogic relationships materialize more explicitly.

Although to a lesser extent (40% of the sampled abstracts: R2, R3), official discourse reasserted its influence on academic discourse about internationalization. One of the abstracts references an institutional document (an official ordinance) while contextualizing the research, and the other mentions “additional language teaching policy” in order to justify the necessity of learning languages: “Ordinance no. 2.567, which approved the creation, institutionalization and implementation of Language Centers (CeLins) at institution campuses under the auspices of the Office for International Affairs”³⁸ (R2); “Against the backdrop of additional language teaching policies in Brazil, exchange programs such as the Young Ambassadors Program, United World College (UWC), Immerse Essay Competition, Education First Challenge, as well as Goiás Sem Fronteiras, have faced a series of hurdles for implementing scholarships, the most serious of which being the candidates’ lack of proficiency in English”³⁹ (R3). Official discourse once again turns to the everyday professional reality of the English teacher upon mentioning their institution of employment (IFSP) or referencing an exchange program to which their institution is a party of (Programa Jovens Embaixadores [Young Ambassadors Program]).

The academic discourse on internationalization was either under the influence of institutional directives (“Ordinance no. 2.567”) or strongly subordinate to exchange program initiatives (R3). In the former case, a dialogic relationship is reinforced between academic discourse and the professional practice which prescribes English teaching in an institutionally oriented manner (“Language Center (CeLins) at IFSP”). In the second case, the English teacher subordinates official discourse (“additional language teaching policies in Brazil”) to “exchange programs” that extend beyond the walls of the institution, concurrently ascribing a negative evaluation to the act of taking advantage of these opportunities due to a general lack of proficiency in English. In the latter case, the academic discourse on internationalization seems supportive of teaching efforts directed specifically at increasing student proficiency in English, regardless of (being sufficiently familiar with) institutional policies to that effect, considering that the official discourse deployed in this case was a more general one (“in Brazil”), which in turn restricted the practice of language teaching to economic concerns and placed emphasis on a product (“implementation of scholarships”). Below is a full transcript of abstract R2, originally published in Portuguese, to illustrate the specificity of our dialogic analysis.

Abstract R2:

Diante da necessidade de inserir o Instituto Federal de São Paulo no cenário internacional, a fim de fortalecer a cooperação e a interação com instituições de ensino, pesquisa e extensão no exterior, e da necessidade de prover a internacionalização da ciência em apoio aos processos de desenvolvimento da tecnologia no Brasil, estimulando estudos e pesquisas que envolvem mobilidade acadêmica, foi publicada, em 13/06/2016, a Portaria 2.567, que aprova a criação, institucionalização e implementação dos Centros de Línguas (CeLins) no IFSP, no âmbito das ações da Assessoria das Relações internacionais (ARINTER). O CeLin do IFSP - Câmpus Sertãozinho iniciciou suas atividades no segundo semestre de 2016, com o objetivo de constituir um espaço no qual diversos cursos de idiomas, voltados a alunos, servidores técnico-administrativos, servidores docentes, e à comunidade externa fossem ofertados, visando colaborar com os processos de internacionalização da instituição e proporcionar o aperfeiçoamento linguístico do público-alvo. Além de permitir a democratização do acesso à aprendizagem de línguas, o CeLin do IFSP - Câmpus Sertãozinho tem atuado como laboratório de início à docência aos alunos do curso de Licenciatura em letras, e também, como articulador de iniciativas que têm como objetivo o compartilhamento de conhecimentos, práticas e experiências que visam ao enriquecimento da formação e da atividade docente. Nesta comunicação, apresentaremos o modo como o CeLin foi estruturado, descreveremos as ações que nele têm sido praticadas, compatilharemos conhecimento teórico-metodológico acerca das práticas pedagógicas desenvolvidas por professores e por professores em formação, e apontaremos alguns desafios encontrados.⁴⁰

Source: Araújo-Silva, Costa and Squinca (2020, pp.49-50).

As seen in Abstract R2 above, the academic discourse of the English teacher was predominantly constructed by means of an interrelationship with official discourse. Not only does the above abstract contextualize the reflection brought forth in the presentation by referencing the institutional document (Ordinance no. 2.567) which created the Language Centers, but it also describes the centers themselves in detail, justifies their existence (“having the Federal Institute of São Paulo (IFSP) play an impactful role in the global scenario”), and states their purpose (“offering various language courses”), target audience (“students, staff, faculty and people external to the Institute”), location (“Sertãozinho Campus”) and range of operations (“training program,” “promoter”). The linguistic-discursive investment (approximately two-thirds of the abstract) in detailing the features and purpose of the Language Centers (“strengthening cooperation,” “promoting the internationalization of…”, “stimulating studies and research projects”) is indicative of the expressive intonation of the speaker, who regards the initiative as a positive one for their institution of employment (“collaborating with the internationalization efforts,” “contributing to language development”). Simultaneously, the speaker maintains an interrelationship with advertising discourse, since they announce that which, at a different time and place, would comprise the results/data of the professional experience being reported (“we will present/describe/share”).

Upon addressing the speech to his/her peers, the English teacher generates expectations (How was the center structured? Which specific actions were taken? What challenges have been faced?) that may be satisfied by addressees, if they buy the announced product - that is to say, should they continue interacting in order to satisfy their curiosity. In this way, the abstract maintains dialogic relationships with at least two presumed utterances, through which the abstract’s addressees may gain access to the information they were promised: the oral presentation, to take place at the International Seminar, and the full scientific paper, which should be published in the conference annals. Below is another example of a full abstract (R1), originally published in English, for the purpose of complementing the specificity of this dialogic analysis.

Abstract R1:

The qualitative study aims to discuss contributions and challenges of engaging L2 English college students in an English language immersion activity. Research has shown that students in language immersion contexts develop their language and intercultural skills and also learn content knowledge from other subjects (CHENG et al., 2009; MARIAN et al., 2013). From this perspective, an English language immersion activity was developed for a group of 28 college students at a Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology in Brazil. The participants engaged in a two-day, 16 hour English language immersion activity while participation in Project Lapassion, an educational program whose goals include facilitating the learning of innovation, internationalization, and soft skills among Latin American undergraduate students. Working in small grups, the learners were challenged with designing solutions to a real-life issue affecting Brazilian women living in cities. The pedagogical model was based on Design Thinking (DT), an approach in which participants work in teams to understand a problem and seek solutions that meet the needs of specific populations (FREDRICKSON, 2017; LEE-ELLIS & BERNHARDT, 2017; ROY & BRINE, 2013; IDEO, 2013). Inspired by Ryder (2019), the researchers/instructors incorporated a DT approach to an English language immersion environment. Data were collected from researchers’ observations and field notes, participant surveys, WhatsApp group interactions, and student-created materials. The results revealed the contributions of combining DT and language immersion to the development of learners’ language and critical thinking skills. The results also revealed language and pedagogical challenges encountered by the students during the immersion activity.

Source: Araújo-Silva, Costa and Squinca (2020, p.49).

In the above abstract (R1), once the paper’s objective is stated, theoretical discourse stands predominant in the academic discourse of the English teacher. The speaker then introduces a premise by referencing earlier studies which determined (“from this perspective”) the methodological procedures used to report the experience (“an English language immersion activity was developed”). The choice of method is further justified by referencing additional studies from 2013, 2017 and 2019. We argue that this utterance responds to previous academically oriented utterances and, in so doing, addresses this knowledge cluster to itself (“inspired by”), thereby directing the steps taken during their professional experiment, which is also addressed to the speaker’s peers.

As it mentions the experiment results (“the results revealed”) in the final portion of the abstract “The results revealed the contributions [...] also revealed language and pedagogical challenges”), the utterance establishes a dialogic relationship with itself through repetition of the word “contributions,” found in the first sentence of the abstract (“This qualitative study aims to discuss contributions and challenges”). As predicted by Bakhtin (2018), dialogic relationships can exist both between utterances as well as between any significant parts of utterances, such as an isolated word, for instance, if it is construed as a sign of the other’s semantic position. In this case, by responding to self through word repetition (research objective / results), the English teacher becomes the other of him/herself upon announcing the results of the experiment (of which s/he was a protagonist) and evaluating them in a positive light (“contributions”). While the experiment did bring contributions, the abstract does not list them in an objective fashion, which evinces advertising discourse as constitutive of this utterance (What contributions were made? What should I do to gain access to them?).

The English teacher addressed the reflection to his/her peers with a view to creating expectations, which may be satisfied by continuing to participate in this discursive interaction that fosters intelligibility of internationalization in the academic sphere, thus illustrating the interest in the infinite dialogue presupposed by Bakhtinian studies.

Final Considerations

This paper set out to furnish an analysis of the academic discourse about internationalization employed by English teachers during the 2020 International Seminar of the Brazilian Association of English Teachers in the Federal Network of Basic, Technical and Technological Education. Our examination of the corpus, which comprised five abstracts of oral presentations available in the seminar’s book of abstracts, was indicative of an academic discourse predominantly focused on English language learning but less frequently preoccupied with institutional demands. The presence of theoretical, official and advertising discourse was also expounded.

The teachers debated internationalization by associating it with either classroom-based language teaching or institutional directives, which suggests that the academic discourse on the issue is constituted in a complex and multidimensional manner. Different viewpoints arose from the diverse professional experiences afforded by the speakers’ career plans: teaching, research, academic outreach and administration activities across different course offerings, levels and modalities. Student mobility and exchange were also touched upon as defining features of internationalization, which brought to light two complementary perspectives on this complex issue: a more inclusive one, focusing to a greater degree on the role of integral education - that is to say, the role of facilitating learning opportunities which allow students to engage in various personal and professional experiences across different spheres of human activity (including mobility and exchange opportunities); and a less inclusive one, which placed higher emphasis on institutional conformation against an international backdrop, wherein mobility and exchange are seen as objectives to be achieved.

Research Data and Other Materials Availability

The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

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• 1
  BAKHTIN, M. The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis. In: BAKHTIN, M. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee and Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986b. pp.60-102.
• 2
  In Portuguese: “o verbal e o não verbal que integram a situação e, ao mesmo tempo, fazem parte de um contexto maior histórico, tanto no que diz respeito a aspectos (enunciados, discursos, sujeitos, etc.) que antecedem esse enunciado específico quanto ao que ele projeta adiante.”
• 3
  VOLOŠINOV, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik. New York: Seminar Press, 1973.
• 4
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 5
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 6
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 7
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 8
  BAKHTIN, M. The Problem of Speech Genres. In: BAKHTIN, M. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee and Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986a. pp.60-102.
• 9
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 10
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 11
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 12
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 13
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 14
  In Portuguese: “toda palavra traz em si marcas sociodiscursivas de esferas, de situações de interação que, em confluência, constituem seus sentidos, seus efeitos de sentido, integrando-a organicamente à situação de interação e à esfera da atividade humana da qual faz parte.”
• 15
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 16
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 17
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 18
  BAKHTIN, M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Trans. Caryl Emerson. 8 Ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
• 19
  For reference, see footnote 18.
• 20
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 21
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 22
  In Portuguese: um “estudante pesquisador(a) de cursos de pós-graduação stricto sensu em ensino de ciências.”
• 23
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 24
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 25
  In Portuguese: “Diante da necessidade de inserir o Instituto Federal de São Paulo no cenário internacional.”
• 26
  In Portuguese: “Diante das demandas e dos desafios da globalização, a internacionalização tem desempenhado um papel importante em instituições de ensino alinhadas com mudanças na sociedade.”
• 27
  In Portuguese: “estimulando estudos e pesquisas que envolvem mobilidade acadêmica;” “programas de intercâmbio.”
• 28
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 29
  In Portuguese: (“Os resumos devem conter os seguintes elementos: [...] resultados (parciais ou finais).”
• 30
  In Portuguese: “Pela complexidade desse objeto de estudo, a pesquisa qualitativa de cunho interpretativista foi opção produtiva com vista ao propósito de entender e interpretar o uso de EMI como construto social inserido em um contexto de língua em uso.”
• 31
  In Portuguese: “Segundo Rajagopalan (2006) [...] o ensino de línguas deve.”
• 32
  In Portuguese: “Autores como Dafouz & Smit (2016); Macaro et al. (2016); Im e Kim (2015); Norton e Toohey (2011) trouxeram contribuições pertinentes à caracterização didático-pedagógica desse trabalho.”
• 33
  In Portuguese: “EMI (Inglês como Meio de Instrução).”
• 34
  In Portuguese: “A pesquisa conversa com a Linguística Aplicada, percebendo a linguagem como prática social no contexto de LM ou L2.”
• 35
  For reference, see footnote 8.
• 36
  In Portuguese: “Como resultado, observou-se que o projeto trouxe importantes contribuições no âmbito linguístico e também pessoal dos participantes.”
• 37
  In Portuguese: “Nesta comunicação, apresentaremos o modo como o CeLin foi estruturado, descreveremos as ações que nele têm sido praticadas, compartilharemos conhecimento teórico-metodológico acerca das práticas pedagógicas desenvolvidas por professores e por professores em formação, e apontaremos alguns dos desafios encontrados.”
• 38
  In Portuguese: “a Portaria 2.567, que aprova a criação, institucionalização e implementação dos Centros de Línguas (CeLins) no IFSP, no âmbito das ações da Assessoria de Relações Internacionais (ARINTER).”
• 39
  In Portuguese: “Considerando-se as políticas de ensino de línguas adicionais no Brasil no momento em que se propõem programas de intercâmbio, como o Programa Jovens Embaixadores, o programa da United World College (UWC), o Immerse Essay Competition, o Education First Challenge, bem como o Goiás Sem Fronteiras, esses esbarram numa série de dificuldades na implementação das bolsas, tendo sido a mais séria delas a falta de proficiência em inglês dos candidatos.”
• 40
  Considering the necessity of having the Federal Institute of São Paulo (IFSP) play an impactful role in the global scenario, for the purpose of strengthening cooperation and engagement with international institutions of education, research and academic outreach, and considering the necessity of promoting the internationalization of science to support technological developments in Brazil by fostering studies and research projects that involve academic mobility, on 13 June 2016, IFSP published Ordinance no. 2.567, which approved the creation, institutionalization and implementation of Language Centers (CeLins) at institution campuses under the auspices of the Office for International Affairs (ARINTER, in the Portuguese acronym). The Language Center (CeLin) at the Sertãozinho Campus started its operations in the second semester of 2016, with the purpose of offering various language courses to students, staff, faculty and people external to the Institute, and with a view to collaborating with the internationalization efforts led by IFSP as a whole and contributing to language development in the target audience. In addition to facilitating the democratization of language learning, the Sertãozinho CeLin has functioned as a training program for students in undergraduate teaching programs, as well as a promoter of initiatives directed at sharing knowledge, practices and experiences that can enrich teacher development and activity. During this presentation, we will present the manner in which CeLin Center was structured, describe the efforts led by the Center, share theoretical-methodological knowledge about the pedagogical practices developed by teachers and teachers-in-training, as well as discuss some of the existing challenges.

Review I

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review I

First of all, I congratulate the author on his proposal. Internationalization is a goal of many institutions, and research that looks at how English teachers position themselves in front of this goal are still scarce. Preliminarily, I approve the text for publication, but not without requesting some changes. I will make some quick comments in this review, but details can be seen in the comments in the file. One superficial aspect concerns the textual problems of the paper, which make it difficult to read and therefore require careful revision. As far as the theoretical foundation is concerned, while noting the key concepts and principles of the DDA, this section needs to be reorganized, rethinking in a particular way the historical review. In the body of the paper, there are points that deserve to be relativized due to the limitation of the corpus (which is not analyzed in totality and this is not clearly announced); with regard to the characterization of the “English teacher;” it should be noted that they are members of ABRALITEC - this already has a weight for their discursive formation, as well as the functions that they exercise beyond teaching. The final considerations do not do justice to the questions raised during the analysis, without addressing, resuming or discussing the construction of the academic discourses (plural even) on the internationalization of teachers proponents of oral communication. In fact, during the analysis itself, the opportunity to discuss the positioning of teachers at an institutional level in the debate on internationalization is neglected. APPROVED WITH RESTRICTIONS [Revised]

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  09 Dec 2022

Review II

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review II

The article “The Academic Discourse of English Teachers on Internationalization During the ABRALITEC International Seminar” proposes to analyze the English teacher´s academic discourse on internationalization. The analysis corpus is formed by 5 abstracts of communications published in the book of abstracts of the third edition of the International Seminar of the Brazilian Association of English Language Teachers in the Federal Network of Basic, Technical and Technological Education. Research in the area of internationalization in/of the Brazilian Federal Network of Basic, Technical and Technological Network of Brazil - RFEPT in dialogue with research in the area of Applied Linguistics / Dialogic Discourse Analysis is also a strong point of the study. Despite these potentialities and merits, there are some points, notions and concepts mobilized without having been properly deployed. For example, the notion of language, the concept of internationalization, of expressive intonation, besides the dialogic analysis operated in the discourses of the abstracts, of which we do not know the authors, not knowing from which place of RFEPT they speak, if they are teachers of English, of English/Portuguese, from secondary and tertiary education, from tertiary education, workload, if they act in the internationalization sectors, etc. The implemented discussions are of great importance to all researchers in the area and that focus their research on the themes of internationalization and the RFEPT.

Complementary remarks: The title promises a much greater generalization: the academic discourse of the English teacher on internationalization. And it doesn't do that. It lacks space-time delimitation, with reference to the International Seminar of the Brazilian Association of English Language Teachers of the RFEPT in 2020. The issue of internationalization in Higher Education linked to the RFEPT raises the potentiality of this text, for awakening in the academic community the importance of this federal network in all discussions related to Higher Education, Graduate Studies, Professional, Technical and Technological Education. Therefore, contradictorily, these same potentialities increase the responsibility of the authors to enter in a dialogic way this tense arena. There is no clarity of the notion of language adopted in the study. Evidently, a notion of language in line with Bakhtin and the Circle is expected, which is close to discourse, this being the language in act. The concept of “expressive intonation” is also not presented. In some passages of the text there is reference to the term “idiom,” which is not synonymous with “language,” and using “idiom” in a text that has “internationalization” as its agenda can mobilize values - potentially contradictory with the notion of language as utterance. There is, at least, a tension between two aspects of internationalization: a more inclusive perspective and another, more linked to international rankings, under the dominance of economic power, which enhances exclusionary educational practices. Thus, it is necessary to take some positions with a view to allowing the reader to construct coherent meanings. In the dialogic analysis, important information from the authors of the abstracts was suppressed. Would this practice be consistent with a dialogic discourse analysis? Table 2 presents a frequency of occurrence of academic discourses by English teachers. How did the author arrive at this percentage? APPROVED WITH RESTRICTIONS [Revised]

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  20 Feb 2023

Review III

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review III

The author considered all the aspects mentioned in the review and now presents a theoretically more consistent study, well-designed methodology both in the corpus selection procedures as well as the characterization of its nature, which gives new direction to the analysis and discussion of the results. I consider the article ready for publication. APPROVED.

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  15 May 2023

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  18 Sept 2023
• Date of issue
  Jul-Sep 2023

History

• Received
  24 Nov 2022
• Accepted
  03 July 2023