The polyphony at the e-learning forums

Abstract

In the last years we observed in the world of business, educational institu-tions, recreational facilities and other organizations how to design courses, trips, seminars, etc. that address different requirements and training needs. These programs are taught by specialists of diverse disciplines and are in-creasingly framed in learning models based on the construction of knowledge. This change has been aided by the rise of information and communication technologies (TIC), which provides a good support so that students and tutors interact. In the forums, space privileged for the intervention, students and teachers make their investments through texts that can be analyzed beyond the words written by the producer of the message. These messages integrate other texts that the speaker/writer brings to consideration when he makes his participation. Thus, they comprise the “other voices” of the speech of the students. From this perspective it is interesting to note these voices which students use as a resource for their interventions, as well as to investigate how they get integrated into the text produced by them. The aim of this paper therefore is to show how these other voices are made present in the participant’s speech taking into consideration for this analysis an online forum from a higher education program. These interventions are analyzed using some key concepts of Ducrot’s polyphonic theory of enunciation (1984, 1986) and other referencing procedures by Authier (1984).