This article reports a study of the sustainability discourse manifested by a Brazilian Higher Education Institution, the Federal University of Paraiba. We based the research on comparing documents and institutional media and their influence on discursive formation. We employed Sociological Discourse Analysis as a research method to capture silences amid the speeches and to reveal ideologies that form actions and omissions. This way, we compared the discourse and the Sustainable Development Goals. Discursive positions, narrative configurations, and semantic spaces, considered with the Sustainable Development Goals as a parameter, revealed an organization that seeks to follow sustainability but with efforts on the social field, leaving other aspects linked to the theme in the background. The temporary closure of several organization sectors due to the COVID-19 pandemic muddled the observations and interviews. This fact may have limited our perception, impacting inferences and results. The research focused on the discourse of Higher-Level Institutions are not ordinary. Comparisons between organizational discourse and the Sustainable Development Goals can potentially reveal institutional commitments to the theme, as well as ideas that influence, positively or negatively, contexts and shared ideologies.
This paper aims to analyze the sustainability discourse manifested by a public institution dedicated to higher education located in the northeastern region of Brazil, the Federal University of Paraiba, during the time interval between the years 2009 and 2020. It used Sociological Discourse Analysis as a research method. It also used the documentation produced by the institution as a data source, in particular its Institutional Development Plans and Management Reports, as well as the media content produced and broadcast by its television channel and magazine. The research also used conversations held with employees linked to organizational management and observations recorded through photographs. Some questions were the basis for the data analysis: Who is the speaker; What is the position of the speaker; Which audiences did the speaker target; What did the speaker silence in the discourse; How did the speaker organize the speech; The research discovered discursive positions, narrative configurations, and semantic spaces that revealed an institution focused on its social function. It used teaching, research, and extension activities to be active in contact with society but placed its internal challenges in the background. It emerged that, despite understanding the importance of sustainability, internal actions to transform the organization into a laboratory for experimentation in this sense decreased due to the prioritization of combating recurrent socio-economic problems.
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