The foundation of authorship in the process of producing the master’s thesis: the (inter)mediated author

Abstract

The authorial figure, whether in literary, scholarly, academic production, etc., is often confused with the person who writes, conceived as a creative individual who seeks to express his intention. Indeed, the existence of the author presupposes that there is a person, however, we should not confuse these two instances. In this doctoral research, we reflect specifically on authorship in the production of a master’s thesis, a discursive genre with production and circulation in the academic environment, which requires, within itself, different voices in a dialog: voices of the master’s student-author, the advisor, the cited authors, the professors of qualification and defense boards, sometimes of the textual reviewer, among others. Therefore, we believe that it is an (inter)mediated authorship, since the author, in this genre, must assume an active role throughout the process, interacting with your interlocutors. Our general aim is to characterize the authorial instance that emerges in the process of producing the master’s thesis, produced in the academic domain, based on the genesis of the writing of this discursive genre, taking into account the demands of the genre, the interaction that is established with the ‘other’ in the academic environment, and the author’s relationship with knowledge, in this case, the scientific productions, the advisor, the other teachers, the textual reviewer, etc. The specific aims are: to reflect on the role of the advisor, as well as other partners, in the process of producing the master’s thesis, whether it is collaborative writing or tends toward a co-authorial work; to discuss discursive genres and, in particular, the academic genre of the master’s thesis, from a Bakhtinian perspective, seeking some subside, also, in Rhetorical Genre Studies; to analyze versions of the same master’s thesis text (process documents) that allow recognizing the genesis of the text, through the movements of it writing, in which participate, along with the candidate, the advisor, professors who constitute the qualification and defense committees, the textual reviewer, among others –  essential for the creational process of the authorial figure. Concerning the theoretical aspects, we base our research on the considerations of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in terms of his conception of authorship, since he defines it as a position of displacement toward the other (other as voices, opinions, discourses), besides being responsible for the orchestration of these voices within his text, and other authors, such as Barros (1999), Marcuschi (2008), Faraco (2009), Motta-Roth and Hendges (2010), Amorin (2018), Sobral (2019), among others. Methodologically, with the support from the Genetic Criticism, we organize the collected data that make up our corpus, namely: digital files (Word and PDF), printed files, e-mail messages, and WhatsApp conversations (text and audio). We verify, in our analyses, that the advisor, co-author in some moments, as well as the professors who are part of the examining boards, and the professional textual reviewer contribute to the expansion of the master’s student academic literacy towards the apprehension of the genre and, also, collaborate to the constitution of the authorship, once the student, by using the genre with freedom and mastery, positions himself socio-discursively, managing theoretical voices within the genre.