Abstract
This paper aims to analyze the sustainability discourse manifested by a public institution dedicated to higher education located in the northeastern region of Brazil, the Federal University of Paraiba, during the time interval between the years 2009 and 2020. It used Sociological Discourse Analysis as a research method. It also used the documentation produced by the institution as a data source, in particular its Institutional Development Plans and Management Reports, as well as the media content produced and broadcast by its television channel and magazine. The research also used conversations held with employees linked to organizational management and observations recorded through photographs. Some questions were the basis for the data analysis: Who is the speaker; What is the position of the speaker; Which audiences did the speaker target; What did the speaker silence in the discourse; How did the speaker organize the speech; The research discovered discursive positions, narrative configurations, and semantic spaces that revealed an institution focused on its social function. It used teaching, research, and extension activities to be active in contact with society but placed its internal challenges in the background. It emerged that, despite understanding the importance of sustainability, internal actions to transform the organization into a laboratory for experimentation in this sense decreased due to the prioritization of combating recurrent socio-economic problems.
Highlights
Language has one of its manifestations in the discourse: it assumes a prominent role in expressing a network of relations between ideology and power
This paper aims to analyze the sustainability discourse manifested by a public institution dedicated to higher education located in the northeastern region of Brazil, the Federal University of Paraiba, during the time interval between the years 2009 and 2020
This research used the Sociological Discourse Analysis methodology to analyze the following question: how is the sustainability discourse manifested in a federal higher education institution? The study had as sources of investigation the last two Institutional Development Plans (IDPs) presented by University of Paraiba (UFPB), which were in force from 2009 to 2013 and 2014 to 2018 (UFPB, 2010, 2014), as well as the current one in the period of the research, whose validity extended from the years 2019 to 2023 (UFPB, 2019a)
Summary
Language has one of its manifestations in the discourse: it assumes a prominent role in expressing a network of relations between ideology and power. Discourse is the object of appreciation of some research methods like the Discourse Analysis: this qualitative methodology seeks to unveil how what is said is produced, going beyond just seeking to understand or interpret, but seeking to highlight historical and ideological aspects (Barros, 2015). It is a banality to hear about sustainability, scholars like Ferrer, Moreira, and Jesus (2019) warn of the lack of understanding of the general public about the scope of the expression. Some researchers tend to link the term to the environmental issue, forgetting its sphere in several other dimensions. Social actors develop their interpretation of sustainability and use it in their speeches to legitimize their actions as correct. Among the actors subject to investigation regarding their sustainability discourse, universities stand out as they face the challenge of reconciling the production of knowledge and the development of learning models more committed to the planet (Arroyo, 2017)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
