Deixis and the teaching of orality

A didactic proposal for articulation

Abstract

In this text, we present a brief reflection on how deixis can be approached in the Portuguese language discipline: not only as a grammatical topic to be addressed in 11th and 12th grade classes, but also as a theoretical concept serving the development of oral competence in its dual aspect (comprehension and production). We therefore start from the following question: how is it possible to stimulate the teaching of orality through the explicit work of deixis in high school classes? First, we provide a theoretical framework for the phenomenon of deixis based on the contributions of linguistic pragmatics, which we consider essential learning in the teaching and learning of Portuguese as a mother tongue, because it looks not only at what is said, but also at the context. Next, we analyze a corpus of six textbooks for the subject, seeking to ascertain the complexity of the cognitive operations activated by the items on this content and verifying the presence/absence of proposals on orality. Finally, we highlight the potential of this grammatical notion. Based on the fundamentals of Text/Discourse Pedagogy, we explore the enunciative coordinates of a letter from Fernando Pessoa to Ofélia Queiroz, which can be integrated into teaching materials dealing with deictic reference.