Historic

 The Academic Master’s Course of the Postgraduate Program in Applied Linguistics was created in 1998, originating from the first Master’s Degree in Literature at UECE, with an area of concentration in English and French. This old program was not yet guided by the new criteria that CAPES- Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) was beginning to impose for creating and maintaining new stricto sensu postgraduate programs. It then had 6 lines of research, which were also understood differently from the current criteria: Linguistic description, Comparative studies, Applied Linguistics to foreign language teaching, Discourse analysis, Literary text analysis, and Translation.

Under the leadership of Dr. José Jackson Sampaio Coelho, the Dean of Postgraduate Studies and Research at UECE, and with the support of Dr. Manassés Claudino Fonteles as Rector, the previous program was phased out. This began a transformative journey, culminating in adopting an integrated vision of Applied Linguistics. This vision would serve as the foundation for the nascent Academic Master’s Course in Applied Linguistics, unifying previously compartmentalized interests in Literature.

The project for the Academic Master’s Course of the Postgraduate Program in Applied Linguistics was approved within the scope of UECE on December 30, 1997, through Resolution no. 2026/97 from the Teaching, Research and Extension Council. In August 1998, it was sent to CAPES, where it would be officially approved

Since then (2010), the Program has strengthened, becoming a reference for the qualification of language teaching professionals in the North and Northeast. Academically, the program has learned to manage its challenges, including determining the direction of the area of concentration and integrating with lines of research. This has been reflected in the search for suitable names that better signal this dynamic. In this sense, in 2011, the construction of a new proposal for PosLA began with the objective of implementing the Doctorate Course in Applied Linguistics.

Based on the faculty’s reflection on the effective vocation of the Program, the area of concentration was renamed “Language and Interaction”, with the same name being maintained for the program, that is, ‘Postgraduate Program in Applied Linguistics ‘ – PosLA. The new name of the area of concentration is justified based on the definition of Applied Linguistics proposed by Brumfit (1995), currently in force in global and national academies, according to which Applied Linguistics deals with the “theoretical and empirical investigation of problems in the world in which language is the central issue” (p. 27). In our understanding, real language problems occur through interactions between people in institutionalized or non-institutionalized environments.

The new proposal promoted a re-articulation of previous lines. Thus, line 1 became “Language, Technology and Teaching,” incorporating the teaching area contained in the former Line 2 (Language Development and Teaching), also explaining the articulation of research in multiliteracies with the teaching-learning processes and the commitment to research into the effects of new technologies on textuality, on forms of interaction in post-modernity and on the genres practiced in digital culture. From this perspective, languages are considered as a set of multi-semiotic and cultural resources and cognition, the thought of in a situated way, an assumption that also led us to articulate part of the old line 2 (“Language Development and Language Teaching”) and the line 3 (Translation, Lexicology, and Cognitive Processes) into a new line, now called “Multilingualism, Cognition and Interaction,” the current line 2. Considering that this discursive-pragmatic perspective, which crosses current lines of research, already characterized the former line 4 (“Cultural Pragmatics and Critical Language Studies”), we maintained its focus on emerging processes in interaction, specifying its approach in critical investigations of the processes of reproduction, support, transgression of meanings and forms of action naturalized by language, through the name “Critical Language Studies,” the current line 3. Therefore, the issue of interaction is present in the current three lines of research:

Line 01 – Language, Technology, and Teaching

Line 02 – Multilanguage, Cognition and Interaction

Line 03 – Critical Language Studies

 After evaluating the opinion of the external scientific consultancy, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel – CAPES, in its 131st meeting held on November 21st to 25th, 2011, recommended the Postgraduate Course in Applied Linguistics – PosLA, Doctorate level.

PosLA has already played a relevant social role through its studies in the Academic Master’s Course in Applied Linguistics. This research on multiliteracies, language development and teaching, audiovisual translation, and critical language studies constitutes an important milestone in applied language studies in the Northeast and will now be deepened through its investigative continuity at the doctoral level.