O papel da música nas atividades de trabalho

Abstract

This article discusses the role of music in work activities by considering music an intersemiotic discursive practice. It uses an interdisciplinary approach composed of discourse analysis, ethonomusicology and ergology in order to be able to examine the topic including music and work factors, put together by discourse. Firstly, the boundaries of traditional work songs are expanded through two unconventional examples: one in an advertisement, and the other one in a product packaging. Then through that expanded framework, it explores examples of two Brazilian communities, one from Bahia and the other one from Maranhão (both in Brazilian Northeast) that sing while they work in extractivist and agricultural activities. The conclusion points out that the relationship between music and work far surpasses the traditional framing of work songs. To better understand the role of music in the discourse of work activities, scholars need to take into account the renormalization which is brought into play and the discursive communities concerned by those complex discursive practices. KEYWORDS: Language and work; Music at work; Work songs; Intersemiotic discursive practices; Renormalization. RESUMO First StepsThis article aims to highlight how music and work are discursive practices and showcases the importance of the relationship between music and labor in different kinds of work. The current literature on music and work comes mainly from perspectives in anthropology, ethnomusicology, and folklore studies. These fields consider this issue in terms of the "work song" repertoire -songs that are sung by traditional communities only in traditional ways of working and singing. Even this well-known field of study lacks in research if one wants to move beyond folklore. Here is a contribution to fill some of that gap with this discussion about work songs.A larger intent of this article is to displace the narrow "work-song-approach" as best characterized by the search for untouched authenticity performed by idealized traditional workers. Instead, I investigate the role of musical discourse in different work activities while attempting not to pre-judge the ways that workers use music in their dayto-day activities often without noticing it. To do so, the article first pushes the boundaries of work songs through unconventional contexts and then explores some examples of semi-traditional work songs through that expanded framework.In the field of Applied Linguistics, the study of the relationship between language and work is an important locus to investigate and comprehend these two universal human activities and their mutual implications: language and work. In Brazil, the Research 103United States. But I can also highlight the use of headphones in contemporary offices or the migrant music that we can often hear in restaurant kitchens around the world as separate from the music played for the spaces reserved for restaurant patrons.The use of music at work takes part in the discourse practices of labor activities.With that approac...