“WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

ASYMMETRY AND INTERLACEMENT OF SPEECHES IN THE SCHOLARLY ADVISING RELATIONSHIP

Abstract

The scholarly advising developed in the context of Post-Graduation is part of the process of training researchers, in any field of knowledge. This paper aims to analyze, through a case study, how an advisor and a MA student dealt discursively in academic guidance with the asymmetry of this relationship and how they dialogue with other voices that are summoned throughout the training process within an academic / scientific environment. To that end, we analysed the speeches given by an advisor and na advisee, in the activity (real work) of scholarly advising. We are based on the Dialogic Discourse Analysis (BAKHTIN, 1988, 2003, 2008; VOLOSHINOV, 1998, 2017) and on the theoretical assumptions of Ergology (SCHWARTZ, 1998, 2010), which allowed us to observe the organization of the academic orientation activity. The analysis suggests that the academic orientation activity, recorded in the interviews and materialized in the student's thesis, is located between repetition and difference, what has already been said and what is new, what is quotation and what is comment, in short, the discourse of authority and the internally persuasive discourse. This misture contributed to open spaces for the negotiation of meanings, for the possibility of disagreement; in exposing their own words and listening attentively to the other's words. Even though the word of authority has its weight and importance in the academic discourse, we understand that the researcher needs to see where his/her word is.