Arque-genealogy as method on discourse analysis: potential learning subject of English language in the institutional publicity discourse

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing the arqueo-genealogical problematizations of Michel Foucault trying to articulate them with the theoretical assumptions of the French Discourse Analysis in order to analyze the publicity discourse of a language course, specifically on learners and English language learning are meant in this enunciative space. We verified the usefulness of Foucault's thought, especially as regards, in particular, the notions of truth, knowledge and power, and how these concepts can serve the analyst as a methodological tool of analysis. We analyzed an advertising produced by an English language course and, in this exercise, we present aspects related to the composition of subject learners and learning of that language in our country. We present the following considerations: 1. It is always the Brazilian speaker who has to learn and use the foreign language, never the foreigner; 2. There is an erasure of other skills at the expense of oral production; And 3. It is given to the foreigner the place of knowledge and power(s).