“Comer normalmente arroz no café da manhã”: análise autoetnográfica de Um Diário de Viagem

Abstract

This study was developed within the "Language and Humanities" research line of the Postgraduate Program in Linguistics (PPG-Linguistics) at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF). The aim is to reflect on the condition of being a foreigner by analyzing a diary produced in an academic exchange situation. Positioning itself as a qualitative, autoethnographic study, it first sought to explain autoethnographic research, which, eschewing positivist epistemology, analyzes the researcher's own experience in order to understand the social relationships established in a given context (González, 2020; Chang, 2008; Adams and Herrmann, 2020; Santos, 2017). The research takes as its object the researcher's accounts as a traveler, recorded in a handwritten diary, written during an international exchange trip. For the analysis, the intention was to position diary writing as a discursive narrative genre, discussing the diary genre, travel narratives and presenting the diary in question (Buzzo, 2010; Machado and Pageaux, 1988). Subsequently, we sought to reflect on the condition of the foreigner (Simmel, 1989; Schütz, 2010; Kristeva, 1994), considering the conceptions of culture (Duranti, 1997) and cultural identity (Bauman, 2005, 2008; Cuche, 1999; hall, 2005). By reading the diary in its entirety, we were able to understand the process of intercultural adaptation (Lysgaard, 1955) during the Traveler's approximately five-month stay, considering the visions of culture observed in the diary text over time. We also identified the presence of interlanguage (Ellis, 2003), due to the constant presence of Spanish throughout the writing, with both lexical and grammatical interference. The results show that the foreigner's adaptation process follows the four stages of Lysgaard's u-curve (1955). The first stage, the honeymoon, was the time of exploration, which lasted around two months. In it, we can highlight the Traveler's quest to explore the place, noting everything that seems positive to her. In this phase, culture is seen as something that can be learned and, through strangeness, she also sees culture as a system of practices, related to habitus (Bourdieu, 1998). Next came the longest period, lasting more than two months: the Crisis, in which the Traveler is struck by a feeling of loneliness. In this phase, the records show that she begins to see the local culture as communication and, unlike in the first stage, she feels it is impossible to learn it. The Traveler then enters the transitional period of Rediscovery which, due to its brevity and lack of data, has not been analyzed in detail. Finally, in the last few days, she reaches the stage of Adjustment, in which the Traveler finally becomes accustomed to the culture and understands it again as something she can grasp and learn. With regard to interlanguage, there was no clear relationship between thestages of adaptation and its presence, with the elements of interlanguage being present in an alternating order throughout the days of writing. For the analysis, lexical interferences, such as the use of Spanish words and even laughter, were divided into grammatical ones, such as the placement of pronouns in the learned language. The study concluded that, despite the limited data on the Rediscovery phase, the Traveler's adaptation process followed the stages of the curve and the interlanguage did not follow this process, but intensified as contact with the language increased.