Mídia, oralidade e letramento no Brasil:vestígios de um mundo dado a ler

Abstract

This thesis is an interpretative essay on orality and literacy in Brazil and their relation to media, as constructed in the historical duration, from the second half of the 17th century until the 1950 s. It investigates these information-processing regimes through the marks and vestiges perceptible in literary texts of significant times in Brazilian history as well as in contemporary historical novels connected to them, which are relevant to understand this communication process. Our major hypothesis considers the configuration of Brazilian society, as far as the cultural practices of the common people trespassed by the media are concerned, as a construction of orality, in the ways messages are produced, stored, publicized and appropriated in order to give experience a sense, although under the influence of the written word. The principal aim of the research is to unveil the specificities of these modes of communication in the first two capitals of the country: the City of Bahia, where the basis of the Colony were established, and Rio de Janeiro, the capital that received the Imperial Court of John VI, saw the birth of the Republic and played the major role in the Great Vargas Era, when radio inaugurated mass communication in Brazil, sustained by orality. This mark in the history of media in our country and its relation to the public, edified and consolidated in a long duration, still points towards the permanence of the oral on television and the new information platforms as well, both in format and content appropriated from orality regimes, constantly modified in their dynamics up to the present. The research is anchored to the theories of the Toronto School of Communication, the Brazilian anthropological and sociological thought, the English cultural studies, and on the methodology of French, American and Brazilian Cultural History.