CLUNL

Escola da Palavra

Identification

• Project identification: Escola da Palavra: (re)significar a vida pela palavra
• Principal Investigator: Matilde Gonçalves (Grammar & Tex group)
• Start date: February 2025
• Keywords: textualisation; vulnerability; sociodiscursive interactionism; thematic and discursive organisation; personal development; mediation; life stories.

Description

The project Escola da Palavra: (re)significar a vida pela palavra (“School of Words: (re)signifying life through words”) has two objectives, developed in complementary stages.

On the investigative level, it analyses: (i) the linguistic configurations of narration and exposition; (ii) the ways in which people express themselves and the (narrative) construction of identity; (iii) the linguistic-textual construction of reasoning.

On a social level, it aims to value the experiences of people in vulnerable situations (serious illness, ageing, end of life) through the collection, co-construction and organisation of life stories, as well as the creation of the person’s legacy.

The project combines Text and Discourse Linguistics with sociodiscursive perspectives on lifelong development, understanding text and words as practices of interaction and as tools of mediation (between the person, their experience and the world). In this way, this initiative promotes an interdisciplinary dialogue between linguistics, psychology and narrative medicine, bringing academic research closer to social contexts and needs, particularly situations of vulnerability.

Team

Matilde Gonçalves (principal investigator)
Antónia Coutinho
Miguel Magalhães
Noémia Jorge
Sónia Mesquita

Collaborations

Ana Catarina Infante (Hospital da Luz; Comunidade de Doulas de fim de vida)
Associação Amadora Compaixão
Associação Amara

Outputs

Oral presentations

Gonçalves, Matilde (with Ana Catarina Infante). O desenvolvimento pessoal no acompanhamento em fim de vida. Presented at the conference Para uma humanização nos Cuidados Paliativos, October 24, 2024, ISCSP-ULisboa. https://www.iscsp.ulisboa.pt/pt/servicos/comunicacao/eventos/1-congresso-e-3-jornadas-para-uma-humanizacao-em-cuidados-paliativos-das-politicas-a-pratica-em-cuidados-paliativos-que-caminhos

Gonçalves, M. (2025). Desenvolvimento(s)? Que desenvolvimento? Presented in the final conference at 8.º Encontro Internacional do Interacionismo Sociodiscursivo, January 24, 2025, NOVA FCSH. https://www.fcsh.unl.pt/eventos/8-o-encontro-internacional-do-interacionismo-sociodiscursivo-isd-2025/

Gonçalves, M. (2025). Escola da Palavra: para (re)significar a vida pela palavra. Presented at Conferência Narrativas do Envelhecimento, NOVA Saúde, February 5, 2025, Reitoria da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. https://www.unl.pt/eventos/conferencia-nova-saude-dedicada-as-narrativas-do-envelhecimento/

Publications

Gonçalves, M. (submitted) Dizer-se perante a finitude: a linguagem como mediação. In Cultura. Revista de História e Teoria das Ideias. ISSN 0870-4546.

Gonçalves, M. (submitted) Meaning and (In)effability: What Individual and Social Representations? In Lexique – Special Issue: Language, End of Life, Death, and Bereavement.

In progress

Establishment of national and international partnerships resulting from initiatives and collaborations already completed or in progress.