Trends and tensions in academic discourse: an analysis of comparative graduate works on Francophone Literatures

Abstract

This article aims to understand the discursive construction of graduate theses and dissertations from universities from the State of Rio de Janeiro that establish a comparison between French-language literature and some cultural, political or social issue in Brazil. From a documental research, centered in the enunciative discourse analysis, the study discusses structures of domination in the sphere of academic discourse and highlight two points: the transgressions and maintenance of elements pertaining to academic genres, as well as the presence, suppression or mitigation of controversy in the argumentative construction of the texts (Negroni; Gelbes, 2005). In the second part, two theses are analyzed in detail, in an attempt to highlight different types of development of the comparative perspective in the context of the world domains of the literary field (Casanova, 2002), and to discuss whether such relations focus critically on the impact of French cultural hegemony on Brazil, or follow a neutralizing or mitigating tendency, characteristic of traditional literary criticism. We identified that the works mitigate or ignore important tensions that could subvert the assuaging pattern of the traditional academic discourse and maintain a comparativist approachcentered on the debate of mutual influences between countries, without evidencing the cultural dominations in course on the literary field.