Análise retórica da seção considerações finais do gênero dissertação de mestrado das áreas de letras e matemática

Abstract

This research has the general objective of analyzing the rhetorical strategies recurrently used in the Final Considerations section of the Master's Thesis, produced by students of the Professional Master's Degree in Letters (PROFLETRAS) and the Professional Master's Degree in Mathematics (PROFMAT) at the State University of Piauí (UESPI). For this analysis, the conventions and social context of the academic domain were considered. Therefore, this research is based on socio-rhetorical and presents as theoretical basis, mainly, the research of Miller (2012 [1984]) and Bazerman (2005, 2015) on gender as an action that takes place in society, by Swales (1990, 1992, 2004, 2016) about communicative purpose, academic discursive community and rhetorical steps, by Hyland (1997, 2000, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2015) about disciplinary culture and research by Oliveira (2016) and Porto (2019) about the concluding remarks section. Concerning to the methodology, it presents a qualitative and quantitative approach for the analysis of the corpus composed of 15 dissertations from PROFLETRAS and 15 dissertations from PROFMAT. We started the data analysis from a textual analysis, which identified the recurrent rhetorical steps in the areas of Letters and Mathematics. Furthermore, in order to validate the data, we analyzed questionnaires answered by 3 guiding professors and 3 former students of the professional master's degrees. We obtained two different rhetorical description tables, since there was an influence of the disciplinary culture in the writing of the information in the section. Thus, the results showed that, for the two areas, resuming objectives, presenting results, contextualizing the research and presenting its importance are the actions that relate to the rhetorical steps most valued in the writing of the section. In addition to these actions, the Literature area values presenting practical recommendations and resuming the justification for choosing the intervention proposal, the latter being specific to PROFLETRAS, since the elaboration of an intervention proposal is institutionalized after the data analysis. In addition, although with low recurrence, the area of Mathematics presented the step that resumes the research problem question, which was not found in the area of Letters. About the results and findings, in addition to the findings, the master's students perform interpretations and deductions, deepening the discussion about the results in the section. From the questionnaires, we verified the influence of the more experienced members on the less experienced ones. Furthermore, contact with other dissertations, reading and analysis of other academic texts, holding discussions on the subject under study, etc. help with the writing process. The experience as a teacher, is decisive in some points of the dissertation, such as, for example, in the elaboration of the research problem. Taking into consideration, we verified the precise relationship that exists between the orientations of the guiding professors, the perceptions of the master's students and the rhetorical steps. The informants reinforced the importance of the results, the objectives, the research problem, the indication of future works, the confirmation or not of the hypotheses in the Final Considerations section, which are aspects valued in the writing of the section.