(Im)politeness content in public schools of Pernambuco: a textbook analysis

Abstract

This article aims to examine to what extent the textbook Time to share - 7º ano (2018) addresses (im)politeness. For that purpose, it takes into consideration the guidelines regarding learner’s pragmatic competence as defined by the Base Nacional Comum Curricular - BNCC (2018). In particular, the ability EF07LI01 which highlights the importance of conflict resolution in oral interactions for learners from Ensino Fundamental. Besides, the corpus analysed is part of a collection approved by the Programa Nacional do Livro Didático (PNLD) of 2020. In this sense, it seeks to verify how the activities in the textbook attempt to raise the learner's pragmatic knowledge in dealing with the phenomenon of (im)politeness. Therefore, the theoretical framework adopted in this study is based on the concept of (im)politeness as presented by Culpeper, Haugh, and Kádár (2017). It also presents the role of the textbook in the teaching process based on the ideas of Huang (2019), Richards (1993), Wells and Moon (2019). The corpus analysed consists of the 8 units and 6 sections of the textbook along with a sample activity. Lastly, the findings have shown that the textbook was not able to achieve the goals related to the BNCC as established in the syllabus, even though it already shows an effort to approach (im)politeness within the classroom. Overall, the results illustrate that the chosen ability was not successfully approached even when addressed.