Sob (re) o texto: o domínio do significante

Abstract

This study proposes a reflection on textual production. In order to provoke discussion, texts produced by second-year primary school pupils were selected. These texts resulted from an experience in reading and writing carried out with a group of the above-mentioned pupils, in the Centro de Ensino e Pesquisa Aplicada à Educação (CEPAE), at the Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG), throughout 1997. Adopting Structural Linguistic theoretical principles as well as Lacanian Psychoanalysis, I started from the hypothesis that language has a functioning of its own which captures the subject and, hence, directs the movement of the linguistic-discursive units at the moment the text is being drawn up. This experience focused on the immersion of the student in a textual universe. Immersed in frequent daily activities of reading and writing, I observed the movement of the signifier in the texts circulating in the classroom, through the similarities and differences in the composition of the children’s texts. It was therefore possible to recognize the relationship of implication between subject and language and to consider the text as an effect of the work of the signifier.