Relações de gênero e sexualidades nos livros didáticos de Língua inglesa do PNLD: práticas de poder-saber

Abstract

This research addresses gender relations and sexuality in the English language textbooks from PNLD. As cultural artifacts, textbooks attend constant educational changes, demanding that research on these artifacts also be done incessantly. Thus, in this research, I question how the State came to control textbooks from evaluation and distribution programs? What are the emergency conditions provided by the PNLD public notices for the presence of statements about gender relations and sexuality in English language textbooks? And how do these statements operate in the English textbook on gender and sexual relations? To attend these questions, I use the studies of Foucault as a theoretical-methodological support to perform a discourse analysis inspired by this author. As a corpus of analysis, I use statements present in the PNLD public announcements and in the four textbooks of the “Way to English for Brazilian Learners” collection for Elementary School (PNLD 2020) and the single volume for High School “English Vibes for Brazilian Learners” (PNLD 2021). From this, public announcements need to be more specific about gender and sexuality issues and allow more for the appearance of statements that operate in a non-biologizing way regarding gender relations and sexuality in textbooks. In addition, although the books seem, at first, to bring a discourse of diversity, they still also bring biologizing discourses, marked by compulsory heterosexuality that neglects other gender identities and sexualities.