Organização retórica da seção de metodologia de dissertações de mestrado profissional nas áreas de letras e matemática

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation was to analyze the rhetorical organization of the Methodology chapter of the Dissertation genre in copies produced for the Professional Master's in Letters and Professional Master's in Mathematics, at the State University of Piauí. For this, we rely on the Socio rhetorical approach of genre analysis based on the theoretical assumptions of Miller (2012) and Bazerman (2015) and on the theoretical-methodological aspects developed by Swales (1990, 2004, 2009). The study starts from a quali-quantitative research from which we have 20 dissertations of the professional master's degrees in Literature and Mathematics, all defended in the period of 2019 and 2020. Our analysis covered three main aspects named: discussion of contextual aspects through the analysis of official documents available on the programs' websites; description of the rhetorical steps present in the Methodology chapter in each area and comparison of findings exploring similarities and differences; finally, discussion on the collaborations of the participants for the production of their copies. In the official documents, it is mentioned about the need to write a Final Conclusion Work that can be a Dissertation or not, but there is no detailing of the compositional and functional aspects of what must be produced. Of the textual examples, in Letters, there are four rhetorical steps that were present in all copies, namely: summarize the chapter structure, describe the collection procedures or instruments, explain the type of research regarding the approach and describe the research scenario. Among them, the step on the description of the scenario stands out, as there is an exclusive section for this strategy. In Mathematics, we identified five steps that were repeated in seven copies, they are: describe the application of the collection instruments, explain the type of research regarding the approach, describe the procedures or collection instruments, present the structure of the chapter itself and indicate the theoretical source or methodological definition of the research. The step of resuming the research theory or methodological definition was greatly highlighted in the copies, as the producers see the need to allocate an exclusive section to resuming these aspects. Comparing, we found that there is similarity in valuing the description of the type of research in terms of approach and procedures or data collection instruments as well as summarizing the structure of the chapter. As a difference, the step Describing the categories of analysis is valued and present only in the copies of Letters, as there was a significant amount of categories to analyze; while in Mathematics, there was none. The other valued steps were present in both areas, with only their recurrence varying between specimens. From the questionnaires, the advisors indicate that there are difficulties in producing academic texts due to factors such as lack of writing experience and distance from academia. To remedy this, the master's students report that they looked for support/guidance in the general manuals, in readings of dissertations and with the professor's guidelines. When asked about what the chapter should contain, they highlighted information about the type of research, the collection instruments and their application and the profile of the research participants.