Linguistic analysis of introductory texts from Letras programs’ websites

Abstract

This research aimed at analyzing the Universities’ discourse used to describe the undergraduate program of Letras in their websites. To pursue this objective, the analysis delved into three textual descriptions of the Letras program from three private universities and focused on Fairclough’s CDA and on Halliday’ SFL. The results indicated that the most recurrent processes are Material, placing the students in a powerful position in text 1 and the institution in text 3, and Relational, identifying the institution in a more influential place. Furthermore, there is a tendency from all texts to present a less academic and more marketized discourse in the presentation of their Letras program.

Keywords

• university discourse
• critical discourse analysis
• systemic functional linguistics
• letras program.