Memoirs and the construction of the self-narrative in the language-culture of the other.
Descriptive academic memoirs. Life narratives. Argumentation. Discourse analysis. Spanish language speakers.
This research focuses on life narratives contained in two descriptive professional memoirs of Spanish-speaking university professors, approved in examinations of public Brazilian institutions, who wrote their memoirs with the purpose of reaching the highest academic title: full professor. In order to prove that academic memoirs also belong to the field of life narratives / autobiographical reports, detailed facts on the memoir as a genre were presented, to the point of the specificity of interest. Also, the research was founded in the theoretical framework of the French discourse analysis (Charaudeau, 2009, 2018, 2019), as well as in the life narratives underpinned in Arfuch (2010), Lejeune (2014), Lysardo-Dias (2014) and Machado (2016), among others. The idea that the communication contract between professor / memoir writers and their interlocutors – assessment jury components – enables the understanding of how enunciation relates to those interacting subjects was supported. Furthermore, an analysis of the argumentative strategies which memorialist professors use so that they can convince the addressees of their respective productions (in a previously planned interview) was pursued. For this purpose, the study was grounded in Amossy (2020). In addition, the narrating professors’ literacy process was highlighted, in accordance with how Silva (2021) defines that issue. As a discussion arising from the qualitative analysis, there was an attempt to show how the memorialist subjects create their convincing strategies towards the interlocutors (assessment jury for the pursued success – or not – in the applied academic title), as well as whether they are entering the other’s culture.