EDITORIAL

Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso publishes original papers written by PhD researchers and university professors from Brazil and abroad that are the result of scientific research in the area of discourse studies, mostly based on the Bakhtinian perspective, as well as on the ongoing dialogue/debate with other theoretical frames of knowledge production. It also publishes book reviews and conference reports, which are important to Literature and Linguistics field, and translated versions of theoretical texts of great interest to the discussion of The Bakhtin Circle's work.

This is our second bilingual issue and the third issue indexed in SciELO's - Scientific Electronic Library Online - electronic collection of selected scientific journals that, henceforth, is going to monitor our production aiming at developing and strengthen the journal's character and quality. On the other hand, we also seek to collaborate in order to achieve the goals set by SciELO and to improve in a systematic, sustainable way the journal's visibility, accessibility, quality, credibility, use and the national and international impact on the scientific publication in our field.

Thus, in the pursuit of continuous improvement of scientific communication and increased national and international visibility of our journal, we invited new members to the Editorial Board and Foreign Language Editorial Board. Today they represent 10 countries in the Americas and Europe and 16 Brazilian universities, located from north to south of the country. Furthermore, we count with 188 referees from almost all Brazilian states and from overseas. We all know that producing a journal is a collective work that demands a lot of responsibility, which is the reason why we thank the acceptance of each, assuring them that it is an honor and a great joy to have them with us, helping us in achieving our goals.

This issue's call for paper – Bakhtin and the Circle: Dialogue with Philosophy and Humanities studies – received the submission of 77 papers regarding the reflections and experience of Linguistics, Philosophy, Applied Linguistics and Language in general researchers. The result, which now can be appraised, is 10 original and high quality papers, bringing together Brazilian and European researchers in reading and applying the Bakhtinian work on different fields of knowledge production. There are four papers from different universities of São Paulo state (USP, UNESP, UPM and PUC-SP/Cásper Líbero), one paper from Mato Grosso state (UEMT and UFMT), one from Minas Gerais state (UEMG), one from Rio de Janeiro state (PUC-RJ, UERJ), one from Alagoas state (UFAL), one from the region of Cariri, Ceará state (URCariri), one from Paris (University of Paris-8) and other from London (Queen Mary, University of London). Besides them, there are 3 reviews of renowned books in our field.

The approaches to the Bakhtinian work were several, enriching and many times combined with related theories. The subjectivity philosophical issue was dealt by Amorim, Alvarez/Lopondo and Del Ré/Hilário/Vieira, sometimes showing the relations between subject's singularity, power and the promotion of an indifferent memory; sometimes checking the self-consciousness constitution and the philosophical-dialogic experience of the subject with literature; and other times from the language acquisition point of view, in which Bakhtin's work is applied in order to comprehend the child's subjectivity, individuality and singularity. In a very original way, the same issue of subjectivity is addressed by Tihanov, taking the grotesque, both as a discursive genre and a cultural attitude and practice, as a point of departure, comments on Bakhtin's Rabelais book. Discini turned her hands to writing about another genre approached by Bakhtin – hagiography – in order to propose an encounter between discursive stylistics and the thinking of Bakhtin and the Circle, especially regarding the notion of outsideness.

Toward a Philosophy of Act deployed Jobim e Souza/Porto e Albuquerque and Martins/Leite/Pontes reflections on the constitutive moments – the non-exemption of liability upon research and the researcher's situated act – and thoughts over concepts, such as an apartness between the world of life and the world of culture. Associations between Bakhtin and the Circle's discourse theory and Applied Linguistics was the subject of Molon/Viana's paper that draws a parallel between the basic conception of the Bakhtinian thought and the contemporary debate in AL.

Finally the issue's call for papers gave rise to two reflections regarding educational issues: Barros/Costa adopt Bakhtinian and Social Semiotics assumptions so as to discuss multimodal literacy; and Fernandes/Carvalho/Campos ponder the educational process using theoretical principles or aphorisms, which claim the specificity of mediation that takes place regarding educator/educatee relation, approaching Bakhtin and Vygotsky.

The reviews deal with works that are undoubtedly important for all of us, authors and readers of Bakhtiniana. Faraco comments on the excellent translation into Portuguese of Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev's book – The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, made by Sheila Camargo Grillo and Ekaterina Vólkova Américo, a work that was lacking for too long in Brazil. Pistori reviews Nuevo diccionario de la teoría de Mijail Bajtin [New Dictionary of Mikail Bakhtin's Theory], organized by the Argentine Olga Pampa Arán, which is for certain a reference book for all the Circle's scholars. Possenti analyzes the work of another Bakhtinian researcher, Augusto Ponzio, that has recently been translated to Brazilian Portuguese and that approaches an issue on which we cannot leave behind: the relations between Chomsky's linguistics and the social ideology.

As it is possible to see, 23 authors, among paper writers and reviewers from 14 universities, two of which are overseas, and 11 translators participated in this issue. Bakhtiniana once again fulfills its aim at promoting and publicizing research papers on discourse studies, collected every six months and written by researchers from Brazil and abroad, with a present international reach.

Beth Brait & Maria Helena Cruz Pistori

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  11 Dec 2012
• Date of issue
  Dec 2012