Program Proposal

 Implemented in 2012, the Postgraduate Program in Applied Linguistics (PosLA) was the first postgraduate program to offer a doctorate at the Humanities Center of the State University of Ceará (UECE), an institution with extensive academic activity in the North-Northeast regions. With a strong presence in areas of study such as language development and teaching, multiliteracies, language and technology, cognition and interaction, translation, and critical language studies, PosLA presents itself with its profile as it is the only program in Ceará with extensive operations in Applied Linguistics.

PosLA operates uniquely in what is already our vocation: studying current issues in Applied Linguistics directed towards practical everyday language and interaction-related problems concerning technologies, identity constructions in the classroom, and diverse cultural and discursive practices.

Line 1, “Language, Technology, and Teaching,” incorporates the teaching area, explicitly articulating research in multiliteracies with teaching and learning processes and a commitment to investigating the effects of new technologies on textuality, forms of interaction in postmodernity, and genres practiced in digital culture.

Within research line 2, “Multilanguage, Cognition, and Interaction,” we have played a significant social role in encouraging social inclusion through audio description and subtitling for people with visual and hearing impairments, respectively, in addition to research investigating language from variational, cognitive, and systemic-functional perspectives.

Line 3, “Critical Language Studies,” seeks to study social change and possibilities for overcoming forms of exclusion through discursive changes. Thus, it focuses attention on critical investigations of the processes of reproduction, sustenance, and transgression of meanings and forms of action naturalized by language.

The interaction issue is present in all three research lines of the program, marking our concentration area as Language and Interaction. The emphasis on the theme of interaction reflects the underlying vision of the research lines, projects, and disciplines that comprise PosLA. This vision understands that the meanings with which we operate socially and consequently guide our actions are generated in socially, historically, and culturally situated interactional processes, i.e., in a situational fundamental for studying diverse forms of language, discursive practices, and their effects in specific contexts. Therefore, the Program prioritizes the dimension of language as a social practice inseparable from the subjects who locally employ it in concrete interactional contexts. In summary, the issue of interaction is present in the current three research lines, whether they are:

Line 01 – Language, Technology, and Teaching

Line 02 – Multilanguage, Cognition and Interaction

Line 03 – Critical Language Studies

Within the conjunction of these three perspectives of investigation, the Applied Linguistics we practice in our program is consolidated in a critical and transdisciplinary perspective, integrating knowledge from linguistic studies and other fields of knowledge to problematize social phenomena in which language is a central element.

With a focus on interactional practices, PosLA aims, in general, to contribute to the formation of social actors who can act reflectively and critically in education, for the development of multiliteracies, in language teaching and learning, in various fields of translation, and the development of public policies in the field of Linguistics by understanding how language operates in the world.

Regarding faculty members, the Program aims to provide conditions for the realization of teaching and research activities, the consolidation and development of the research lines and groups in which they work, and a greater articulation of their research with social reality.

Concerning the institution, the Program aims to contribute to forming a center of excellence in Language and Interaction, responding to the challenges of education for multiliteracies and the plurality of social demands. In this way, it aims to carry out quality scientific work, expand the offer of Postgraduate studies at UECE, and diversify and deepen the linguistic knowledge that underpins social practices.

With respect to the student body, our mission is to train researchers and educators (masters and doctors) capable of working at a higher level, qualifying them for interdisciplinary research in the different fields of Applied Linguistics, focusing on the functioning of language in its different perspectives, such as linguistic, cognitive, sociocultural, historical, and political.