Lines of Research

The concentration areas of the Master of Letters are constituted by the following Research Lines:

Concentration Area in Linguistic Studies

Line of Research 1: Approaches for Linguistic Analysis

This line of research investigates the linguistic system of both mother and foreign languages. It enables to analyse phonology, lexicology, lexicography, dialectology, geo-linguistics, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and linguistic policies. This line of research provides the theoretical and methodological deepening of linguistic analysis, as a way to contribute to the development of studies on the linguistic system.

Line of Research 2: Applied Linguistics

This line of research focuses on theories and approaches of applied linguistics for foreign and mother language teaching; language teachers’ education; literacy, analysis and production of teaching material. The line aims to contribute to the development of research methods and approaches in applied linguistics and teaching issues.

Line of Research 3: Text, Discourse, and History

This line of research develops research projects that focus on the epistemology and history of linguistic ideas, that is to say, investigations that seek to answer in what forms language knowledge is constituted and transformed over time. It analyses how concepts, methods, theories, materials and linguistic instruments were developed and how languages ​​were conceived and evaluated, as well as how the disciplines that deal with language were organized and institutionalized. In its interface with discursive studies, this line of research addresses theoretical and practical reflections regarding the constitution of text’s status in its dialogical character to investigate from French Discourse Analysis. It employs, therefore, its conceptual and methodological instruments, the production, circulation and the repercussion of the discourse(s), according to their heteroclitic density, in the historical composition of the meaning and the subjects within the social structure.

Line of Research 4: Brazilian Sign Language

This line of research develops researches in various areas of linguistics that have as their object of investigation the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) and other signed languages. It also addresses bilingual education and the social inclusion of deaf people. Among the topics encompassed in this line are: theories and methods of studies of visual-spatial modality of sign languages; teaching and learning of Brazilian Sign Language and other sign languages as L1 and L2, teacher education and bilingual education for the deaf; documentation, description and linguistic analysis of Libras and sign languages; research of the relationships between sign language, culture and deaf identity; sign language acquisition; signwriting of visual-spatial languages; teaching Portuguese as a second language for the deaf and other foreign languages in the written modality; studies on sign language translation and interpretation.

Concentration area in Literary Studies

Line of Research 5: Literature, History and Imaginary

This line of research investigates the relations between literature and the historical, cultural and social processes; the historicity of literary discourse; literary history and historiography; literature, regionalism and Tocantins literature. The line addresses the studies of the imaginary, analysis of symbolic and mythical issues represented in literature, in an interdisciplinary perspective that includes theories and methods taken form history, anthropology, sociology, and psychoanalysis.

Line of Research 6: Theory, Criticism, and Comparative Studies

This line research focuses on literary theories and literary criticism, the philosophical, critical and epistemological dimensions in literary and comparative studies, the relations between literature, other arts and media, literature and cultural studies, postcolonial and gender studies. It also focuses on reader-oriented theories, literature teaching and literacy. The line addresses the interplay between literary theory and comparative literature, post-modernity, post-coloniality, intertextual and interdisciplinary relations.