Faculty Research Projects
The faculty research projects are included in research groups and/or centers. A brief description of them is presented below. Detailed description of each project can be found in the correspondent professor’s curriculum lattes.
Adair Bonini [Lattes][adbonini@yahoo.com.br]
Dr. Bonini develops two research projects in Applied Linguistics:
a) “School newspaper as community media and Portuguese language teaching” – The project is focused on the teaching of Portuguese within experiences of producing school newspapers. It is a participatory research, considering that both social interaction and knowledge generation are jointly held by the members of the community and the involved researchers. The theoretical reflections of epistemological and Marxist nature are based on critical discourse analysis of speech genres, a subject of critical social sciences. The concept of speech genre is mainly approached by rereading the works of authors such as Norman Fairclough, Mikhail Bakhtin, Paulo Freire, and Antonio Gramsci;
b) “Critical genre analysis in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic media” – it focuses, through the speech genre analysis, on the construction of dominant or contestatory practices (GRAMSCI, 2014 [193?], SANTOS, 2008 [1987], 2009; SAID, 2007 [1978]) related to several media (newspaper, television, internet, community radio, school newspaper, community newspaper, etc.). To that end, Bonini’s (2013) Critical Genre Analysis, which takes an emancipatory perspective in close dialogue with Paulo Freire’s work, is employed as theoretical delimitation.
Adja Balbino de Amorim Barbieri Durão [Lattes] [adja@pq.cnpq.br]
The research project ”For an analysis of the interlanguage of non-mother tongue language learners” departs from the assumption that, if on one hand, interlanguages of non-mother tongue language learners are idiosyncratic, on the other hand, their analysis allows the identification of learning-related processes. Therefore, if some aspects of this inter-linguistic continuum are to be identified and properly analyzed, it may be possible to take the subject of foreign languages teaching and learning to another level. Consequently, professor Adja Durão is interested in advising works which have the purpose of reflecting about linguistic (written/oral) constructs developed by Brazilian learners of foreign languages – mainly Spanish – through interlanguage, no matter its stages, since their description and analysis allow us to understand the way that non-mother tongue language learners go from the initial stage of linguistic production to more complex stages of production in the language of study, considering systematicity, variability, as well as non-linearity of interlanguages.
Aline Pizzio [Lattes] [alinelemospizzio@gmail.com]
Ana Paula Santana [Lattes] [anaposantana@hotmail.com]
Dr. Santana develops research in enunciative-discursive neurolinguistics within the following lines: 1) Language – discourse, written culture, and technology: the works in this line are related to the analysis of the normal and pathological operation of language, and to speech therapy practices related to oral and written changes; 2) Language and Cognition: the works in this line focus on the regular and altered linguistic-cognitive processes, as well as on the evaluation and speech-language therapies mainly related to aphasia and dementia. Both lines of research have as theoretical assumptions the social-historical and social-cognitive perspectives that consider language as an interactive-discursive instance, and take into account the enunciative movements, the social practices of reading and writing, the speech genres, and the relation between subject and language.
Ana Lívia Agostinho [Lattes] [e-mail]
Atilio Butturi Junior [Lattes] [atilio.butturi@ufsc.br]
Cristiane Lazzarotto-Volcão [Lattes] [cristiane.volcao@cce.ufsc.br]
Dr. Lazzarotto Volcão develops two projects:
a) “Orthography teaching and learning processes”, linked to the ‘Language Acquisition and Processing’ line of research. This research project aims to contribute to the study of writing production, in relation to the appropriation and use of the orthographic system by students, considering the discussion about the way this object of study has been dealt with by teachers in their practices. Additionally, this research project aims to contribute to the field of writing acquisition, as it provides a description and an explanation of the writing acquisition process. This study is justified by the need of approximating school and university, and by the possibility of investigating and discussing the theme – orthography teaching and learning –, considered as one of the essential formal and normative aspects of text production to be taught by schools. Another crucial matter to be highlighted is the fact that orthographic errors are a large source of social discrimination and censorship, sometimes by schools themselves.
b) “Standard Model of Contrast Acquisition”, linked to the ‘Speech under a perceptual-acoustic-articulatory point of view and the phonological models’ line of research. This project aims to continue the studies developed in Lazzarotto-Volcão (2009), regarding the construction of an analysis model of phonological systems with deviations. Initially, in 2009, a model was tested by analyzing five cases of Phonological Deviation (PD), and its relevance was proven. However, more cases need to be analyzed in order to validate the proposal. Therefore, this study intends to analyze the phonological system of 20 children participants, in order to verify the suitability of the model and make the necessary adjustments, considering its applicability in future researches and in the clinical practice of the speech-language pathologist.
Cristine Görski Severo [Lattes] [crisgorski@gmail.com]
Dr. Severo develops two intertwined research projects: one focused on language policies, and the other on linguistic variation and/or change. The project “Language policies: a critical approach” deals with the relation among languages, subjects and power in postcolonial, peripheral or marginal contexts, searching for the local social meanings of language uses and discursive practices for the purpose of reflecting and (de)constructing language policies and the concept of language itself. The project “Sociolinguistic and discursive studies” proposes a discursive approach for understanding processes of linguistic variation and/or change both theoretically and methodologically. It is centered on topics such as: discursive motivations for variation and/or change processes; language and identity; style, discourse and language; the evaluation issue; and linguistic-discursive hybridizations.
Daniel do Nascimento e Silva [Lattes] [dnsfortal@gmail.com]
Edair Maria Gorski [Lattes] [gorski@cce.ufsc.br]
Dr. Gorski currently coordinates two integrated research projects: 1) “Verb moods and modal verbs: a social functionalist approach of modality” (line of research: Usage of Grammar); and 2) “Social and stylistic factors in the sociolinguistic approach” (line of research: Linguistic variation and/or change). Both projects involve diachronic and/or synchronic analysis of linguistic phenomena. The former deals with linguistic variables whose variants alternate (i) between the indicative and the subjunctive moods, and (ii) between different verb forms for expressing auxiliarity. It also analyzes the emergency contexts of new forms/functions under the optic of grammaticalization. The latter involves (i) discussions around the nature of social and stylistic factors taken into consideration in Labov-oriented research, and (ii) analysis of the role of social and stylistic factors on variable linguistic phenomena in Brazilian Portuguese.
Fábio Luiz Lopes da Silva [Lattes] [flopes@cce.ufsc.br]
Saussure and Chomsky as philosophers of science: Saussure and Chomsky are probably the most well-known names of what we call modern linguistics. The importance of the theory they developed is, for certain, directly proportional to the severe dedication of both towards an authentic linguistic philosophy. But, in truth, the greatness of these authors arises from even greater ambitions, materialized in innovative considerations in the field of Philosophy of Science. That is exactly the aim of this project: to identify and to analyze certain aspects of the Philosophy of Science as they were developed by Saussure and Chomsky. Regarding Saussure, the objective is to appreciate the motivations and consequences of the gesture of declassifying the theme of origin. Regarding Chomsky, to highlight the role that, according to him, Newton will play in the collapse – still not fully comprehended – of materialism in the 16th and the 17th centuries.
Felício Wessling Margotti [Lattes] [wfelicio@cce.ufsc.br] [Researcher page 1] [2]
Dr. Margotti is member of the Scientific Committee of Brazil’s Linguistic Atlas Project, representing the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. This interinstitutional project aims at describing variation in Brazilian Portuguese within the whole national territory, taking into account the social and diaphasic dimensions in each of the spots (locations) considered in the research. At UFSC, he coordinates the ”Brazil’s Linguistic Atlas (ALiB): contributions” and the ”Brazil’s Linguistic Atlas (ALiB): South Region” projects. These ALiB sub-projects have the immediate and specific objective of carrying out interviews to record speech data in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. Such interviews will be transcribed phonetically and graphemically. The study will include the exegesis, description and partial analysis of the data collected in these interviews as well as of other data collected by ALiB researchers in other parts of the country. In the medium term, the objective is to contribute to the development of Brazil’s Linguistic Atlas. Dr. Margotti also coordinates, at UFSC, the Brazil’s South Region Linguistic-Ethnographic Atlas (ALERS) project, which had its first volume (Phonetic and Morphosyntactic Maps) and second volume (Lexicosemantic Maps) published in 2011.
Gilvan Muller de Oliveira [Lattes] [gimioliz@gmail.com]
Dr. Gilvan develops two projects within the ‘Language Policy’ line of research. The first, “External Language Policies in Brazil”, is his postdoctoral project carried out in the National Autonomous Izatapalapa University, in Mexico, and it analyzes the worldwide promotion strategies of the Portuguese language in relation to strategies of other languages in the “Linguistic Market”. The second, “Linguistic Observatory of Indigenous Schooling”, is an interinstitutional project led by the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMG), sponsored by CAPES, and will provide management inputs for the Guarani-Mbya language within the correspondent ethno-educational territories. The work systematizes data from several sources on the school uses of Guarani-Mbya, evaluating the results of the “distinct, bilingual, and intercultural” education that is currently practiced in six Brazilian States (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo).
Heronides Maurílio de Melo Moura [Lattes] [heronides@uol.com.br]
“Interface between cognition and pragmatics” – The objective of this project is to examine linguistic phenomena under the perspective of cognitive linguistics, taking into account the interface of the conceptual structure with pragmatic factors. It involves studies on causality, linguistic representation of space, polysemy, metaphor, and synonymy.
“Cognition in use” – This project develops research that looks for interaction among cognitive linguistics methods, within a language-in-use approach. The focus is the functioning of grammatical structures in their semantic, cognitive, and functional aspects.
“The form-meaning relationship: cognitive and pragmatic aspects” – This project aims to examine the relationship between form and meaning in human languages. It starts from the assumption that the relation between syntax and semantics is not uniform; in other words, a meaning can be represented by more than one structure, and the same structure can have more than one meaning. The project’s specific objectives are: developing a historical mapping of theories regarding the relationship between form and meaning; showing that pragmatic and cognitive factors affect the semantic-syntactic interface; describing possible inferences of certain grammar constructions and showing the role of cognitive and pragmatic factors in these inferences; and describing and analyzing specific constructions.
Izabel Christine Seara [Lattes] [izabels@linse.ufsc.br]
Dr. Seara currently develops two research projects: 1) “Prosody and intonation: a comparative study between distinct languages” – This project is linked to an international project called Prosodic Multimedia Atlas of the Romanic Space (AMPER), which focuses on the investigation about Brazilian and European Portuguese, French, Spanish, and Italian. The works developed here intend to deepen the study of intonation/prosody of speech in Florianopolis, as well as in other regions of Santa Catarina, and even of distinct foreign languages. 2) “The phonetic details: acoustic exploratory analysis of speech segments” – This project aims to analyze the phonetic details of speech segments established as variants of phonemes of the Brazilian Portuguese, notably present in the speech of Florianopolis natural born citizens. This analysis will be mainly based on acoustic analysis. In a second stage, the studies will focus on segments of natural (semi-spontaneous) speech observed in the VARSUL Project’s data base.
Izete Lehmkuhl Coelho [Lattes] [izete@cce.ufsc.br]
The projects “Diachronic study of the status of the verb-subject order in two Portuguese varieties: European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese” and “For the History of Brazilian Portuguese in Santa Catarina – PHPB-SC” address issues of syntactic variation and include: (i) collecting, cataloging and editing written sources from the state of Santa Catarina, dated back to the 19th and the 20th centuries; (ii) comparing the state’s diachronic written data with Lisbon sources; and (iii) describing and analyzing diachronic data focused on epistemological issues about the syntactic properties of Portuguese varieties throughout the centuries. These two projects are linked to the ‘Linguistic Variation and/or Change’ line of research.
Leandra Cristina de Oliveira [Lattes] [leandraletras@hotmail.com]
Regarding the variationist and changeable character of languages, the phenomena to be investigated by Dr. Oliveira conceive grammar as emergent, in which structures are at service of the cognitive and communicative function. Based on that, her research interest is to study morphosyntactic phenomena of distinct languages – especially Portuguese and Spanish – from a functional approach, with an analysis model based on discourse. The works to be developed consider the performance of social, discursive, semantic (cognitive and pragmatic) and communicative aspects in the variation of grammatical items/constructions. The look on the implications of variation and change in the context of language education is also contemplated.
Regarding what is most concrete in language – communication, which occurs in the circulation of distinct speech genres –, the phenomena of interest within this research sphere come from considering language as an act of social interaction, inseparable from the discursive situation in which language manifests itself. Under this conception of language as an eminently social fact, the studies comprehend the analysis of the performance of social, discursive, semantic-cognitive, and pragmatic-communicative aspects in language usage, leading these discussions towards foreign language teaching. The interest for a transdisciplinary perspective sets the research goals and methodologies in different perspectives of Applied Linguistics – focused on the use of speech genres in language teaching – without ignoring theoretical postulates and research results that concern language in use.
Leonor Scliar Cabral [Lattes] [lsc@th.com.br]
Considering the implementation of the automatic analysis of morphemes and the automatic slicing of grammatical relations, provided by the CHILDES Project, the goal of Dr. Cabral’s research is to find more precise results for the MLU calculation, one of the most important measures in language acquisition. Additionally, the research aims at solving complicated problems in the morphology of the Portuguese language verbal system for counting units, including the cumulation of the person / number / tense / aspect / mood categories in primitive tenses (the most used, and the first to be acquired), and the morphological marks of the verbal metaphony. The publication of ‘Principles of the Brazilian Portuguese Alphabetical System’ and of ‘Practical Guide to Literacy Instruction based on Principles of the Brazilian Portuguese’s Alphabetical System’, by the Contexto publishing house (São Paulo, 2003), led to achieving the goals of the previous project, whose continuity is urgent to ensure training of educators that are aware of the principles of the Brazilian Portuguese alphabetical system, regarding both decoding and codification. In addition, the project aims to create pedagogical material that applies such principles, avoiding text distortion, endless lists to learn by heart, and incoherences, among which the most conspicuous is that Portuguese has five oral vowels.
Mailce Borges Mota [Lattes] [mailce@cce.ufsc.br]
Dr. Mota works with the cognitive and neurocognitive aspects of acquisition and processing of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as first language and as additional language, through two research projects. The first project is part of the Psycholinguistics concentration area, in the ‘Language Acquisition and Processing’ line of research, having as central goal the study of neural substrates of the acquisition and processing of morphosyntactic aspects of BP as mother tongue and/or as additional language by children, teenagers, and adults. This project includes the study of language disorders, both acquired and developed, such as dyslexia, alexia, and aphasia. The developments of this project aim to investigate (1) the frequency effects in the acquisition and processing of BP’s regular and irregular past tenses, (2) the acquisition and processing of BP’s gender and number agreement, and (3) the role of implicit and explicit memory systems in language acquisition, processing and disorders. The second project, developed within the Linguistic Theory and Analysis concentration area, part of the ‘Linguistic and Cognition’ line of research, aims to study the processing of morphosyntactic aspects of BP as mother tongue and as additional language by adults, from a specific neurocognitive model – the Declarative/Procedural Model (Ullman et al., 1997; Ullman, 2001a; 2001b; 2001c; 2004; 2005). This project is focused on investigating the hypotheses of this model regarding the mental lexicon and mental grammar, and the role of individual differences such as age and sex. Both projects are conducted through the analysis of behavioral data and evoked potentials.
Marcos Antonio Rocha Baltar [Lattes] [marcos.baltar@ufsc.br]
Dr. Baltar works in the field of literacy and mother tongue teacher training. His current research project ”Media and school: literacies and text genres” investigates media literacy in schools, the teaching and learning of text/speech genres that arise in the production of media in schools, as well as their implications for the education of literacy agents in schools.
Maria Inêz Probst Lucena [Lattes] [inez@ca.ufsc.br]
Dr. Lucena investigates issues of foreign language teaching and learning, especially pedagogical practices and didactic development related to language teaching/learning processes in basic education. Her individual research project aims to discuss and reflect on assessment practices in foreign language classrooms through an ethnographic, methodological-qualitative approach. This study involves a number of issues, including conceptions of language and teaching and socio-historical conditions that are present in language teaching/learning. It also investigates how future foreign language teachers act as linguistic actors, learning, modifying, and redefining the use of the foreign language in their social and cultural activities. These issues are approached in a larger interinstitutional, project, developed alongside other researchers of the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO), Mexico, and the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil.
Marianne Rossi Stumpf [Lattes] [marianne@ead.ufsc.br]
Dr. Stumpf researches Brazilian Sign Language with an approach that is particularly related to text and education, discussing the following issues: literacy; pedagogical practices; simplification of the SignWriting system; text production and reading; research and study of dictionary development (monolingual and bilingual); teaching and learning objects in language classes; didactic elaboration for the teaching and learning process; technologies / distance learning / videos; and transcription corpus.
Mary Elizabeth Cerutti-Rizzatti [Lattes] [maryeli@intercorp.com.br]
Dr. Cerutti-Rizzati focuses her research on written language, working in two research projects within Applied Linguistics. The first project converges with the ‘Mother tongue teaching and learning’ line of research and focuses on writing during didactic-pedagogical actions related to the Portuguese Language in basic education, with special emphasis on public schools. The project’s developments involve conceptions and methodologies in the literacy process; reader and writer development in schools; and linguistic analysis in favor of the appropriation and use of written language. The second project is part of the ‘Language: discourse, written culture and technology’ line of research, and focuses on the uses of the written language in distinct microcultures, and the hybridization of these uses regarding their insertion in the contemporary society’s graphocentric domains. The project’s developments focus on literacy practices and events in school communities; reading practices within families; meanings/implications of the use and appropriation of written language within the universe of adult (il)literacy; and the demands of using written language in the professional education.
Núbia Saraiva Ferreira [Lattes] [nubiarech@uol.com.br]
Pedro de Souza [Lattes] [pedesou@gmail.com]
Rodrigo Acosta Pereira [Lattes] [drigo_acosta@yahoo.com.br]
Dr. Pereira works with Applied Linguistics in two distinct lines of research – ‘Language: discourse, written culture, and technology’, and ‘Mother tongue and foreign language teaching and learning’. In the first, he advises research focused on the study of speech genres in different spheres of the human activity. In the second, he advises research on mother tongue teaching and learning (reading, writing, listening, and linguistic analysis) within the context of basic education schools.
Ronice Müller de Quadros [Lattes] [ronice@cce.ufsc.br] [Página de pesquisa]
Dr. Quadros currently develops the project ”Bilingual and bimodal development”. Most works with deaf children using cochlear implants (an electronic medical device surgically implanted to hearing impaired patients) have focused on the development of oral language with the use of the implant. No scientific investigation has yet examined the development of sign language and of oral language as two systems in an implanted bilingual child, comparing them with natural bilingual situations liven by, for example, hearing children with deaf parents. With data longitudinally collected from the children, as well as with experimental data, the research aims to investigate the second possibility, questioning how early exposure to sign language and to oral language would affect the development of each modality in the life of a deaf child user of a cochlear implant. The project is being developed in partnership with professors Diane Lillo-Martin, PhD, from University of Connecticut, and Deborah Chen-Pichler, from Gallaudet University, and is sponsored by CNPq and NIH.
Rosângela Hammes Rodrigues [Lattes] [hammes@cce.ufsc.br] [Página de pesquisa]
Dr. Rodrigues’s ongoing research, developed within the Center for Studies in Applied Linguistics (NELA) research group, covers two lines of research in Applied Linguistics: ‘Mother tongue teaching and learning’ and ‘Language: discourse, written culture and technology’. In ‘Language: discourse, written culture and technology’, she advises research focused on the study of speech genres, especially on print journalism, as well as studies focused on the relation between genres, discourses, and subjectivity in various social domains, with emphasis on the school sphere. In ‘Mother tongue teaching and learning’, she advises studies that highlight: (i) action research in the field of didactic elaboration of reading, text production, and linguistic analysis; (ii) historiographical research about the teaching and learning of reading and text production in textbooks, and about the constitution of Portuguese as a school subject.
Rosângela Pedralli [Lattes] [rosangelapedralli@hotmail.com]
Rosely Perez Xavier [Lattes] [rosely@ced.ufsc.br]
Dr. Xavier works with foreign language teaching and learning within several educational contexts. Her current project investigates the practice of a same type of comprehension task (written and oral) in the learning of basic education students, and the effect of distinct didactic sequences in these students’ performance. She also works in projects that investigate the use of implicit and explicit strategies for evaluating their potential in the acquisition of different structures of the foreign language. Teacher education and teaching practices are also included in her studies, addressing the learning of pedagogical knowledge within the context of initial teacher education.
Sandra Quarezemin [Lattes] [quarezeminsandra@gmail.com]
Dr. Quarezemin works in the area of Linguistic Theory and Analysis, specifically in the field of Generative Syntax. She develops the project ‘The left periphery of the sentence in Brazilian Portuguese’, which studies the syntactic structure of sentences with activated peripheral area. Since the 80s, many works have been showing that syntagms and sentences have a well-articulated internal structure. The project aims to investigate the structure of sentences with active left periphery and the description of the syntactic-discursive phenomena related to such structures. The focus of the project is sentence embedding (which involves wh-interrogative, relative, and completive sentences), cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences, as well as sentences with focus and topic. The project is based on the cartographic approach that deals with the hierarchical structure of the syntactic constituents in a detailed, systematic manner, identifying complex representations with positions dedicated to different interpretations (cf. Cinque, 1999, 2002; Rizzi, 1997, 2004; Belletti, 2001, 2004; MIOTO, 2001).
Sandro Braga [Lattes] [sandrocombraga@gmail.com]
“Laboratory of Academic Writing and Readings – LABEAL”. The project of the Laboratory of Academic Writing and Readings at the Federal University of Santa Catarina is included in the Linguistics field, more specifically in Applied Linguistics. Its purpose is to promote teaching, research and outreach in reading and writing processes by means of literacy practices and events involving text/speech genres. The Laboratory aims at becoming a space where the written text can be submitted to the constant process of reflection when it comes to reading, writing and re-writing. Hence, the laboratory’s purpose is not only to build a physical space for reading and writing, but mostly to consolidate an environment where it is possible to think about these processes. The project does not aim to produce a ‘recipe’ for learning (and teaching) how to read or write, but to guide reading and writing experiences, aiming at the understanding of the material and ideological production conditions involving teacher and student in the formulation and acquisition of knowledge through reading/writing practices. More specifically, it aims to identify the resultants from these processes in such a way that it is possible to form comparisons of the students’ reading and writing abilities within Portuguese Language teaching and learning processes in Applied Linguistics, so that new possibilities can be (re)created for these practices. One of the main teacher complaints in the academic environment is on the difficulty students have when it comes to writing activities, many times related to the difficulty regarding reading interpretation. Therefore, research within New Literacy Studies has pointed out that the problem in fact consists in the students’ lack of knowledge about how genres work within the academic sphere, which can create conflicts between what is expected and what is done when these texts are developed. Together with this issue, there are other matters in the scope of variation between the spoken and the written modalities, that is, the distance between the spoken modality – under a colloquial perspective – and the desired standard language for academic text/speech genres. In this way, the purpose of highlighting the discursive textual genres in the university lies in the observance of the autonomy of the living languages that, antagonistically, act over their own constitutive rules. That is why some people have defended that the place for language is not, at least not only, in normative guidelines. In this sense, the texts that emerge in the university sphere have the specific function of historically marked social interaction, situated in what concerns the construction and the spreading of knowledge. In accordance with this assumption, the matter requires a series of investigations in the field of Applied Linguistics. Thus, taking into account the barriers in consolidating a consistent reading systematization, the project also includes the creation of reading guidance alternatives that can generate meaning to the academic writing. The idea is to awaken the other’s text – the one being read (that is, the author’s) – as motivation for thinking the construction of the student’s own text (the student as an author). This is a relevant project, once it is known that reading and writing should not be seen as a (de)codification of letters, but rather reading and writing education should enable the learner to be capable of critically positioning him/herself regarding the text, and realizing that effects of meaning are multiple. Furthermore, writing makes use of a language that predominates in specialized spheres of human communication, places of confrontational relations, of force and power; the one who does not dominate this instrument stays out and, as consequence, heightens social exclusion indexes. With that, the project not only proposes the study of the material aspects of text development in a pragmatic manner, but also contributes to the promotion of citizenship.