Experience with WhatsApp in the Context of Research: Another Aesthetic of Verbal Creation

ABSTRACT

The social isolation to detain the impacts caused by the Sars-Cov virus in 2020 and 2021 produced a new scenario in the context of research. This article constitutes a rewriting of the last chapter of the doctoral thesis, written by Flávia Maria de Menezes, completed and defended in full social isolation, using WhatsApp as an environment for meetings with the research group, the supervisor and other events in academic life during the Doctorate course, which were not possible in person. The mentioned chapter of the thesis is a letter written hypothetically to Mikhail Bakhtin, to think about the discursive experience on the WhatsApp social network as another aesthetic of verbal creation. The rewriting intended to produce a purposeful and inviting text for debate and reflection on Bakhtinian concepts, which were the basis for thinking about the aesthetic dimension in discursive production on WhatsApp as a chronotope.

KEYWORDS:
WhatsApp; Chronotope; Meetings; Discursiveness

RESUMO

O isolamento social para conter os impactos provocados pelo vírus Sars-Cov, nos anos de 2020 e 2021 produziu um novo cenário no contexto da pesquisa. Este artigo se constitui na reescritura do último capítulo da tese de doutoramento, de autoria de Flávia Maria de Menezes, concluída e defendida em pleno isolamento social, utilizando o WhatsApp como ambiente para encontros com o grupo de pesquisa, a orientadora e demais acontecimentos da vida acadêmica no curso do Doutorado, que não eram possíveis de forma presencial. O referido capítulo da tese é uma carta escrita hipoteticamente a Mikhail Bakhtin, para pensar a experiência discursiva na rede social do WhatsApp como uma outra estética da criação verbal. A reescrita pretendeu produzir um texto propositivo e convidativo ao debate e à reflexão sobre conceitos bakhtinianos, que foram a base para pensarmos a dimensão estética na produção discursiva no Whatsapp como um cronotopo.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
WhatsApp; Cronotopo; Encontros; Discursividade

[…] (and to cease being present to myself as someone-yet-to-be, to turn out to be all I can be already here and now, means-to die as an intelligent being)

Mikhail Bakhtin (1990, p. 124; italics and parentheses on the author himself).

Introduction

This article is part of the doctoral thesis Formas de pensar pesquisa-militância-infância com o Grupo de Pesquisa Infância e Saber Docente: Ensaios bakhtinianos [Ways of Thinking about Research-Militancy-Childhood with the Research Group Childhood and Teaching Knowledge: Bakhtinian Essays], authored by Flávia Maria de Menezes, which placed research groups at the center of the discussion as spaces of militant scientific production with childhood, children and early childhood education, especially institutions created and maintained by public authorities.

Research groups, in our understanding, are reinterpretations of Bakhtinian circles, space-times to talk, produce thoughts and records that allow them to circulate in the most diverse fields of society, especially those for which and with which ideas are produced.

The doctoral thesis in question was anchored in several readings and notes by Mikhail Bakhtin and his companions, on the valuable words recorded in his works, with special relevance to the Brazilian anthologies Questions of Literature and Aesthetics: A Theory of Romance, 2014 edition by Hucitec Publishing, and Aesthetics of Verbal Creation, 2015 edition by WMF Martins Fontes.

It is worth making a reservation regarding the context of production of the research endorsed here, which has resiliently gone through moments of great tension, due to the events experienced by Brazilian society since 2016. We understand, at that time, that what we think and record, whether orally or written, or even in another form of language, becomes the record of our passage in the world. This for us is emblematic: knowing that humanity has endured and faced major dilemmas, conflicts, problems, catastrophes, pandemics, in short, it has endured as humanity because it enunciated, produced speeches and can communicate them, perpetuating its existence. Thus, meeting Bakhtin and his readers in times of coup d’état and pandemic was (and has been) a transformative experience, not only in the professional sense or in studies, but in life in general, another way of looking at life and seeking possibilities, nourishing oneself with hope.

Therefore, turbulent times, of dissatisfaction, fear, insecurity and isolation. Thus, the words expressed in this text were woven, which will talk about how it is possible to weave thoughts with children and childhoods, through research in non-corporeal spaces of academic relationships. This is an article that has its origins in provocation. As political apartheid became stronger in the Brazilian social scene,¹ with the far right on one side and progressives on the other, relations became frayed and social networks became the place to discontent, to be exposed and expose, but also strengthen alliances. With the Covid-19 pandemic, which established social isolation throughout 2020, starting in March, the writing of the thesis in question took place in the fabrics that were produced in social networks, especially WhatsApp, placing the experience at the organizing center of ideas, with Bakhtin and his readers.

Our thoughts around the meanings of experience meet Bakhtinian ideas about eventfulness and happening. Bakhtin brings the “being-event into eventicity” when he talks about “events” taking them in the sense of human participation in the world, and it is with meaning that we understand the experience related to childhood, children and children’s education in Brazil, which are central themes in the research that gave rise to this text (Bakhtin, 1984).² Bakhtin’s writings produced a diversity of thoughts, especially among Brazilian readers. His studies on daily genres, crowds, mundane speech, how all of this unfolds in novels is, without a doubt, what brings us closer to children as young people, but who are in the world.

Even though Being-event in eventicity was a concept created by Bakhtin (1984),³ who positioned it in a physical world, in concrete terms, we take this concept as a possibility to think about human relationships in different dimensions, including non-corporeal ones, which we include in social networks on the Internet. The ideas of love and otherness between people in eventuality, proposed by Bakhtin, allow us to think about interaction in virtual universes, with or without face-to-face relationships, so that we do not get lost in our presence in the world, or better said, even if we are not in a present body, the virtual world has space for the enunciation of being an event, in eventfulness.

The Internet, in this text, is being understood as an event, a communication phenomenon. The proposed objective is not to deal with this phenomenon in all its dimensions, but to think with Bakhtin and his readers, social networks, especially WhatsApp, as a space-time of knowledge production for research groups whose center of organizing ideas is crossed with children and Brazilian childhoods. We think of this social network and discuss it in this text as a very peculiar, but absolutely powerful, chronotope; another great road, which does not detract from the great road of life, written by Bakhtin in his thoughts on the “encounter” (1981).⁴ For the author, people are essentially expressive, their expressiveness being what puts them in presence in the world, which perpetuates them. Bakhtin states that expressiveness does not have its basis in the human psyche, in the individual, but “in the most immediate social situation and in the broader social environment,” that is, the principle of the act is external to the person and is only possible in verbal interaction, even though it does not imply that this interaction is in-person, face to face (1973, p 83).⁵ Interactivity on the internet, therefore, has provoked us to understand it as a contemporary event that has enabled another aesthetic of verbal creation.

1 Methodological Notes

The social isolation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic as an urgent health measure, produced global and very severe consequences in Brazil. Academic studies and research moved to virtual fields, seminars and meetings, conversations and debates, as well as the social network WhatsApp, which became a meeting room for many research groups, so that academics could continue producing its science and strengthening the country’s sovereignty. Part of the doctoral studies and research, in the production of the thesis that gave rise to this article, took place in social isolation, using WhatsApp as a meeting and support point, as well as contemplative reading with responsive translation as methodologies that, we emphasize, were used in the research and production of the master’s thesis, which preceded the doctoral thesis.

Amorim states that “understanding is not a place of transparency and saturation of meaning, but a place of mediation” (2004, p. 48).⁶ This implies reshaping a logic that has long been established, especially in scientific discourses in which the place of reading is the place of understanding and apprehension of the meanings expressed in these discourses. In the experience with reading and writing “there is always something that we think and experience that escapes us or, even, we must consider that there is no way to guarantee that, even expressed in a certain way, the meanings do not escape in the act of understanding” (Menezes, 2015, p. 167).⁷

The responsive translation constitutes a procedure, a methodology for the dialogues, the questions that crossed us in the research experience and in the writing of the text. Therefore, we understand that we are not what we write, but we are also not separated from what we say in our scriptures. Hence the need for a responsive act by the researcher towards their translations, so that they do not become a pure representation of themselves, erasing what is of the other in their translation, nor the overlap of others in relation to the researcher-self, as in this way there is no way to guarantee the authorship of the act (Bakhtin, 2017).⁸ In this sense, in our research experience we understand with Menezes (2015), that “there is no way to separate contemplative reading from responsive translation, as both are creative acts of thought, that is, without the contemplative reading of the word-act of the other, the translation becomes empty in terms of responsiveness” (p. 87).⁹

The production of notes was also a methodological strategy, as participation in the group’s virtual meetings, in conversations on WhatsApp, in addition to other academic events that took place on the Internet, such as lives and webinars, produced pages of notes that were used in dialogue with the literature review in the works of Bakhtin (1993,¹⁰ 1981,¹¹ 1986,¹² 1999),¹³ to think about discursivity on WhatsApp as a “new aesthetics of verbal creation.”

The concept of chronotope was also explored in the research and rewriting of this article as a methodological strategy. Bakhtin (1981)¹⁴ defines the chronotope as a reading tool, which made it possible to think about discursive genres, especially romance genres, and take them as a window that allows us to look at life with all its questions, deviations and distortions, full of its plurality of events: plural in voices, plural in meanings. Thus, the chronotope as a methodological tool acts in contemplative reading and responsive translation as an organizing center for ideas, in addition to contributing to the production of spatio-temporal contexts (Menezes, 2015, 2021).

The doctoral research involved an investigation into two WhatsApp profiles, one created in August 2016, to bring together teachers and researchers interested in childhood education university units, institutions for the education of young children linked to universities, which at the time the research was written, this group brought together 92 people. The other group, created in April 2018, was intended for conversations and exchanges of messages between members of the research group in which the doctoral thesis, endorsed here, is linked. This second group, at that time, brought together 22 participants, including master’s and doctorate’s students, graduates in Pedagogy, and public school teachers.

Conversations were collected about many issues, considering children, childhoods and early childhood education, themes that, in a certain way, constituted the identity and common interests between the participants of both groups. These people, most of them women, found in WhatsApp a dialogical arena of activism and research with children and childhood, in addition to the adversities experienced by early childhood education teachers in public institutions, or better said, teaching in early childhood education, just as research with children takes the place of the childlike, that which requires control and surveillance; commonplace, smaller, less important and, therefore, with lower payment, less promotion, and many other forms of inequalities, which related to gender, age, race, among other markers, we would start a debate that would not fit in this text.

Day by day, capturing the screens with the discursive events in the two groups investigated here generated images that helped us think about the constancy, stabilities, themes and plots of the conversations, the motivations that generated the exchange of messages, considering the different degrees of intimacy between the participants, since they were different groups in their composition, but with similarities. The group with the largest number of participants brought together mostly women employees of university preschools, in different regions of Brazil, as well as researchers, with or without an employment relationship with these institutions, that is, some researchers were teachers at the schools and others at the university where they were linked at that time. Therefore, many people spoke to each other on WhatsApp without ever exchanging glances in person. The other group had a much greater degree of proximity, as well as intimacy and bonding, as it was a research group that, due to social isolation, found its meeting room on WhatsApp. Therefore, a group displaced in space and time.

The contemplative reading of the messages in the profile, in addition of some screenshots to highlight fundamental issues in the analysis and writing of the text, were essential as methodologies for enabling the production of a narrative written in and through the word-act of the other, without which the translation would become empty in terms of responsiveness, or as Bakhtin translated it well when thinking about the place of the self/author in relation to the other/character:

Thus, the person suffering does not experience the fullness of his own outward expressedness in being; he experiences this expressedness only partially, and then in the language of his inner sensations of himself. He does not see the agonizing tension of his own muscles, does not see the entire, plastically consummated posture of his own body, or the expression of suffering on his own face. He does not see the clear blue sky against the background of which his suffering outward image is delineated for me. And even if he were able to see all these features-if, for example, he were in front of a mirror-he would lack the appropriate emotional and volitional approach to these features. That is, they would not occupy the same place in his own awareness that they do in his contemplator’s. (1990, pp. 25-6).¹⁵

2 Weaving Another Aesthetic of Verbal Creation

Social networks have been producing new chronotopes for us to think about humans and the humanities in contemporary times, and that is why we were inspired by this event to investigate the presence of children in these contemporary chronotopes, the production of children’s cultures and how adults have been thinking and dealing with children on social networks.

We think with Bakhtin (1986),¹⁶ that the object of human sciences are expressive and speaking beings, which implies capturing them in all fields of human life and not just in the fields of science. Therefore, the conversation circles, the events of everyday life, culture, artistic productions, in short, the world in which humans inhabit is full of humans, and therefore, a fertile field for our captures in research experiences. In this sense, we understand the virtual field, which is constituted outside of materiality, outside of concreteness, but with expressive reality. There is potency for reality and concreteness in this field and, therefore, we are taking its dimension to think of it as a field of human life in dialogue with Bakhtinian thought.

Regarding WhatsApp, we highlight that it is a chat program developed by Jan Koum, a Ukrainian who was born in Kiev in 1976, but migrated to the United States very early, and it was his experiences in the American territory that led him to create this application, on February 24, 2009.

Initially, WhatsApp was an instant communication tool only for mobile devices, but the latest versions can be used both on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) and on personal computers through the internet browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. The application offers several interesting communication features such as sending text, photos, audios, videos and recently started offering the option to make calls (Kaieski, Grings and Fetter, 2015, p. 4).¹⁷

So, WhatsApp can be understood as an instant and simultaneous messaging application. They are chats, everyday conversations, that is, forms of interaction that were thought of and discussed by Bakhtin and the Circle in studies on everyday genres (1981,¹⁸ 1973).¹⁹ It is possible to talk to many people at the same time, and it is cell phone numbers that enter us into this network. Thus, it is simultaneously possible to find people and participate in conversations that take place in groups and personal contacts that are formed on WhatsApp, which makes this application a very peculiar pluridialogical space; a place of encounters that are not fortuitous, as we somehow invite the other person/others to the conversation, or we are summoned by this other person/others (Bakhtin, 1981).²⁰

WhatsApp, in our view, joins art, science and culture as a fourth field of human life: the virtual field, where human life takes place in potency and not in physical presence. As a field of human activity, WhatsApp is linked to the use of language, that is, in this field there are humans speaking all the time. For Bakhtin, the fields of human life are mixed, but they are not diluted. In this way we perceive WhatsApp: art, life, culture and virtuality, all present in the constitution of this chronotope (1981).²¹ What is stated in this application presents thematic content, language styles and compositional construction that allow us to think of it as an everyday discursive genre. In essence, it is everyday conversations and other “particular sphere of communication” that constitute this application in relation to language (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 61),²² however there are other genres that can be shared, such as academic texts, music, images, among others, expanding the communicational dimensions of what is stated in instant messages by the participants of this network.

However, we are not considering WhatsApp a literary work, a complex discursive genre; it is not a carrier of texts, although it is possible to access many manuscripts and even books in this application, but that is not the crucial issue, that is, the purpose of this social network is not to carry texts, but to enable meetings and conversations. WhatsApp is, therefore, a chronotope, a great place for multidialogical meetings. The speed and simultaneity that characterize communication in this social network, as well as its space-time dimension, without demarcations, without borders and with continental breadth, allow us to think of it as multichronotopic.

When analyzing the novels, Bakhtin considered that there are chronotopes that are more condensed in relation to the events in the characters’ lives, such as the dining room, the drawing room, the castle; and there are others with less condensation intensity, such as the threshold chronotope. However, it is on the “road,” a chronotope where most of the encounters take place by chance, that we encounter an issue with which we have a lot of empathy: there is no social distance between the people who meet or, at least, these hierarchies are not evident in the encounter, especially because the chance that intertwines the destinies of those who meet disguises, in a certain way, the social distances, but does not deprive the dialogical power of this chronotope: people bump into each other, meet and in some way affect each other in their destinies, although conflicts are not the keynote in these events, which is why they are fleeting encounters (1981, p. 246).²³

For Bakhtin, the smaller the condensation, the more ephemeral the event, and the more condensed the chronotope, the greater the intimacy and approximation, which implies a more complex, more conflicting, more contrasting dialogology. However, “most important in all this is the weaving of historical and socio-public events together with the personal and even deeply private side of life.” (1981, p. 247).²⁴ We are understanding that the intertwining that Bakhtin refers to is the active principle in meetings, they function as ethical markers, which can be closer to public, social or private life, revealing “the secrets of boudoir,” depending on the degrees of intimacy between the people who meet (1981, p. 247),²⁵ which is noticeable on the research group’s WhatsApp profile.

Therefore, we think of WhatsApp as a chronotope that places us in the world in potential: the world is in potential, humans are in potential, experiences, events are also there, and are valid and applicable in face-to-face reality, this is because WhatsApp, like all forms of digital communication, creates a virtual reality that is not parallel, but a reality in a dimension that is simultaneous to corporeal life.

In the interaction on the WhatsApp profiles analyzed in the research, it was possible to observe other elements that make up this peculiar chronotope, including non-verbal ones, such as photographs, for example. There are other genres stating something like an invitation, a debate, news, but conversation is the backbone in the discursive experiences that are lived in this space, and in this sense we think of WhatsApp as a chronotope, whose predominant genre and through which discursive practices occur is the everyday genre, with special emphasis on oral and written conversations (audio and text messages, as well as stickers and emojis).

We think that WhatsApp is close to the “space of parlors and salons,” in the way Bakhtin thought of this chronotope. We understand that in this space-time encounters occur with greater intensity, as they are “no longer emphasizing their specifically random nature as did meetings ‘on the road’ a or ‘in an alien world’” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 246).²⁶ Therefore, this absence or almost absence of causality contributes to a closer relationship between the participants and, as in novels, in which the emergence of this chronotope of the room/living room brought the dialogues into the narrative, bringing with it the passions, motivations, desires and other striking traits of the heroes’ personality, on WhatsApp the dialogues/conversations are the keynote, because in it we are closer and therefore more intimate, our presence is much more visible, or better said, the dialogues they define the space and time in the meeting. A mix of emotions intertwines with the agendas with which we share and by which we exist in this chronotope, as we are listeners/readers/speakers and, also, we know this “something else” about the person with whom we communicate, highlighting that this something else has a lot to do with the context of speech, the speaker, the extra verbal context of reality (the situation, the environment, prehistory) and the context that surrounds it. Finally, all this interrelationship of circumstances that surround meetings in the face-to-face world and constitute the statement and the enunciation as a whole are also present in the WhatsApp chronotope.

However, we also perceive, in WhatsApp, traces of the great “road,” only the great “road” of agreed, desired, cherished meetings, as there will always be the great road where there is life pulsing, people meeting, displacements, transformations.

Thinking about how alterities occur between speakers on WhatsApp is also an issue in writing this article. Talk about the heroes/characters, their relationships and authorship. To think about this author/character-hero relationship in this very peculiar chronotope, we take some Bakhtinian premises. We do not consider the existence of an author(s) and one or more characters as distinct beings (the creator and the creature) in the plots created on WhatsApp, although we recognize the existence of a consciousness that encompasses and concludes another consciousness, as happens with the author and the character in the aesthetic activity:

[...] the author not only sees and knows everything seen and known by each hero individually and by all his heroes, but also sees and knows more than they do; moreover, he sees and knows something that is in principle inaccessible to them (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 12).²⁷

Therefore, the author’s consciousness is comprehensive, transgressive and responsible for the completion not only of the character and his life in the plot, but also of the work as a whole, which leads us to consider that authorship in enunciative processes on WhatsApp does not happen as in novels, in acts that create characters and plots, but in the form of an author-person, who performs a kind of displacement of the person in the face-to-face world to the profile-status in the virtual universe: this author-person presents himself in two dimensions: a real corporeal one and another virtual corporeal. We also consider an interpellation of the real author-person in the virtual author-person, in the sense of the scope and transgressivity that the conscience of the first has over the conscience of the second, or better said, it is possible for the author-person to control his participation in the discursive events that take place on WhatsApp, in which he participates as a profile-status, as well as to exist because he states his position in the agendas and debates that are given as a possibility for the participation of everyone.

Bakhtin tells us in his theory about novels, that the character “lives his life congnitionally and ethically,” whose act in the plot of the work is guided by the author (1990, p. 12),²⁸ however this form of creation, that is, author-creator of plot characters, does not happen in the WhatsApp chronotope: people are displaced simultaneously in two different worlds and become two people at the same time, one of them being the profile/status, a personification of a network user, who does not translates into a character, therefore it is not a fantasy, it is not fiction, as each participant is actively experiencing virtual life, that is, there is materiality in the profile/status but there is no real corporeal presence, as this body is virtual. Therefore, we understand that in the WhatsApp chronotope we are, at the same time, the conscience and the conscience of the conscience; we actively incorporate both consciousnesses: the consciousness of the author/person and the consciousness of the profile-status. Thus, it is possible to say about a self-personification of the person and also about the self-control of the actions of this personified person (profile/status) in this chronotope. It is in this movement that alterities permeate: the person with themselves, with their personification (their other self) and with their others, considering in which way or ways events are treated and how we experience them in the totality of our lives and both worlds, real and virtual.

Conclusion

With the aim of an outline for a possible finish, Bakhtin with his philosophy of language helps us understand WhatsApp as a place for verbally interactive and extremely dialogical meetings. WhatsApp is a chronotope that allows us to think about militant research, since in this space-time it is possible for alterities to be placed over identities, allowing people to relate side by side, dispensing with all forms of hierarchies.

We understand the relationships that occur in this peculiar chronotope as constituted in and by ethical and aesthetic activities, although we do not consider it a literary work, but the discursive structure is constituted in this relationship which, according to Bakhtin, “on a necessary principle has a productive and constructive character” (1990, p. 5).²⁹ In the chronotopes of novels, as Bakhtin postulated, the author fights with himself to create a character whose image is not his likeness. In the WhatsApp chronotope, the fight is fought in defense of the person’s conscience outside this world, although, also, through the right to an aesthetic personification, the right for both consciousnesses to be active and dialogical, among themselves and with others, because if they coincide, side by side, we will be facing a purely ethical event: I-for-me, which can never be contemplated by the other. Bakhtin (1990)³⁰ tells us that to the extent that we are aware of our presence in the existential world, we are already suggesting the existence of another interested in us and perhaps this is the great power of the WhatsApp chronotope: a privileged space-time for the production of otherness between people, because it is a place of pluridialogical and more horizontal encounters and approaches. And it is in this sense that we bring you closer to the great “road,” that is, the great place of passage in life where everyone is side by side and, therefore, can practice disinterested love, with hints of eloquence and casualness. But, we also consider that there are plots, there are intrigues, there is space-time condensation, there are points of intersection in the events, which makes this chronotope a large living hall too, where people enter there for common motivations, because of which they are attracted, repelled, conflicted, contrasted.

Therefore, a richness that gained prominence in the research and motivated the writing of this article, or in other words, thinking with Bakhtin about WhatsApp as a chronotope, thinking about how verbal creation takes place in this chronotope and, from there, considering WhatsApp as powerful in the production of a militant research practice with children and childhood.

In our research experience, we understand, with Bakhtin, that in our investigations, some words can take on very powerful meanings and contours in the discursive structure that is produced in the writing of texts. The word research, then, takes on this characteristic, because with it we understand the experience of research as an act responsive to science, life and culture.

We agree with Bakhtin when he says that any object of knowledge can be objectified, transformed into a thing, however this is not possible with the human, which cannot “be perceived and studied as a thing, for as a subject it cannot, while remaining a subject, become voiceless,” and further adds that “consequently, cognition of it can only be dialogic” (1986, p. 161).³¹ Therefore, research as a human activity is an active experience, it involves a “cognitive activism” between knowledge and subjects: the object of knowledge and the subject, the knower and what is made known, all intertwined with life, culture and science, because there is no way to separate humans from their fields of existence. Human Sciences are necessarily dialogical sciences and need to promote dialogical activism among consciousnesses: both the voices that create and those that contemplate are living and active consciousnesses. Therefore, in dialogue with Bakhtin, we understand research as a volitional act of one subject in response to another.

Militancy, which is another idea we launch to germinate thoughts, constitutes the materialization of responsiveness, and every responsive act is an act of otherness. The world of otherness is a militant world: we go to the other armed with the disinterested love we have for him/her; we go to the other to create, with him/her, a position; we go to the other to produce a perspective in which we can have empathy and love for different positions, and this needs to be the place of the scientist who focuses on children and childhoods so as not to run the risk of losing them along the way. Militant research, therefore, is capable of submitting to an order, but not to an imposed order; understands the place of meaning, but recognizes that it is the meanings that produce dialogical arenas and they are open, available, otherwise the research becomes arid. If research is a responsive experience and activism an experience with otherness, the two together are the best possible reading of childhood, because in our understanding, only militant research has the power to approach childhood and understand it as a childish arena for the production of meanings, which at any time destabilize and give new meaning to adult cultures.

Thus, these two words imbued with dialogical power served as ethical and aesthetic guideposts in the production of the thesis and, now, in this article. Words that constituted a field materialized in and with the experience of the researchers, but which, with the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the years 2020 and 2021, found conditions in WhatsApp to continue existing and enunciating.

• 1
  Here we are referring to the Coup d’Etat that the country suffered with the impeachment of elected President Dilma Rousseff, on August 31th, 2016, which plunged Brazilian democracy into dark times.
• 2
  BAKHTIN, M. Toward a Rewording of the Dostoevsky. In: Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. 8th printing. Translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 283-304).
• 3
  See footnote 3.
• 4
  BAKHTIN, M. Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel - 1. The Greek Romance. In: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. pp. 96-98.
• 5
  VOLOŠINOV, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of language. Trad. Ladislav Matejka and R. Titunik. Translator’s Preface.Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.
• 6
  In Portuguese: “a compreensão não é o lugar de transparência e saturação do sentido, mas lugar de mediação.”
• 7
  In Portuguese: “há sempre algo que pensamos e que vivemos que nos escapa ou, ainda, devemos considerar que não há como garantir que, mesmo expresso de certa forma, os sentidos não escapem no ato de compreensão.”
• 8
  BAKHTIN, M. M. Toward a Philosophy to the Act. Translation & notes by Vadim Liapunov. Edited by Vadim Liapunov & Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.
• 9
  In Portuguese: “não há como separar a leitura contemplativa da tradução responsiva, pois ambas são atos criadores do pensamento, ou seja, sem a leitura contemplativa da palavra-ato do outro, a tradução torna-se vazia no que tange à responsividade.”
• 10
  Footnote 9.
• 11
  Footnote 5.
• 12
  BAKHTIN, M. M. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee and Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
• 13
  Footnote 6.
• 14
  Footnote 5.
• 15
  BAKHTIN, M. Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity (ca. 1920-1923). In: BAKHTIN, M. Art and Answerability. Early Philosophical Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Translated by Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990, pp.4-256.
• 16
  Footnote 13.
• 17
  In Portuguese: “Inicialmente, o Whatsapp era uma ferramenta de comunicação instantânea apenas para dispositivos móveis, mas as versões mais recentes podem ser utilizadas tanto em dispositivos móveis (smartphones e tablets) como em computadores pessoais através dos navegadores de internet Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox e Opera. O aplicativo disponibiliza diversos recursos interessantes de comunicação como o envio de texto, fotos, áudios, vídeos e recentemente passou a disponibilizar a opção de efetuar ligações.”
• 18
  Footnote 5.
• 19
  Footnote 6.
• 20
  Footnote 5.
• 21
  Footnote 5.
• 22
  Footnote 13.
• 23
  Footnote 5.
• 24
  Footnote 5.
• 25
  Footnote 5.
• 26
  Footnote 5.
• 27
  Footnote 16.
• 28
  Footnote 16.
• 29
  Footnote 16.
• 30
  Footnote 16.
• 31
  BAKHTIN, M. Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences. In: Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee and Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986, pp. 159-177.
• Translated by Ana Paula de Menezes Portocarrero - [e-mail] and, André Portocarrero - [e-mail]
• Reviews
  Due to the commitment assumed by Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso [Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies] to Open Science, this journal only publishes reviews that have been authorized by all involved.

Research Data and Other Materials Availability

The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

References

• AMORIM, Marília. O pesquisador e seu outro Bakhtin nas Ciências Humanas São Paulo: Musa, 2004.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Para uma filosofia do ato responsável Tradução aos cuidados de Valdemir Miotello e Carlos Alberto Faraco. São Carlos/SP: Pedro & João Editores, 2017.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Arte e responsabilidade. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. Tradução Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Wmf Martins Fontes, 2015. pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. O autor e a personagem na atividade estética. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. Tradução Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Wmf Martins Fontes, 2015. pp. 3-192.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Reformulação do livro sobre Dostoiévski. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. Tradução Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Wmf Martins Fontes, 2015. pp. 337-357.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. O romance de educação e a sua importância na história do Realismo. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. Tradução Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Wmf Martins Fontes, 2015. pp. 205-258.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Metodologia das ciências humanas. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal. Tradução Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Wmf Martins Fontes, 2015. pp. 261-306. [Adendo]
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Formas de tempo e de cronotopo no romance (Ensaios de poética histórica) I. O romance grego. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Questões de literatura e de estética A teoria do romance. Tradução Aurora F. Bernardini et al São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 2014. pp. 213-233.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Formas de tempo e de cronotopo no romance (Ensaios de poética histórica) - Observações finais. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Questões de literatura e de estética A teoria do romance. Tradução Aurora F. Bernardini et al São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 2014. pp. 349-362.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail (VOLOCHÍNOV, V. N). Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem: problemas fundamentais do método sociológico na ciência da linguagem. Tradução Michel Lahud e Yara Frateschi Vieira, com colaboração de Lúcia Teixeira Wisnik e Carlos Henrique D. Chagas Cruz. São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 1999.
• KAIESKI, Naira; GRINGS, Jacques Andre; FETTER, Shirlei Alexandra. Um estudo sobre as possibilidades pedagógicas de utilização do Whatsapp. CINTED-UFRGS Novas Tecnologias na Educação Porto Alegre/RS. v. 13 nº 2, pp. 1-10, dezembro. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22456/1679-1916.61411
  » https://doi.org/10.22456/1679-1916.61411
• MENEZES, Flávia Maria de. Formas de pensar pesquisa-militância-infância com o Grupo de Pesquisa Infância e Saber Docente: Ensaios bakhtinianos, 2021, 156 f. Tese (Doutorado em Educação) - Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, 2021. Disponível em: https://www.bdtd.uerj.br:8443/handle/1/17165 Acesso em 15 mai. 2026.
  » https://www.bdtd.uerj.br:8443/handle/1/17165
• MENEZES, Flávia Maria de. Onde estão as crianças da Carochinha? Uma investigação na relação pesquisador/criança na produção de conhecimento de uma creche universitária, 2015, 204 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) - Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, 2015. Disponível em: https://www.bdtd.uerj.br:8443/handle/1/10717 Acesso em 15 mai. 2026.
  » https://www.bdtd.uerj.br:8443/handle/1/10717

• Editor in Charge
  Maria Helena Cruz Pistori

Review II

About the reviewerSCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review II

The present text brings a relevant and current theme, with interpretive potential. The title meets the expectation of its research object regarding scientific research and WhatsApp in the research context. However, it presents theoretical-conceptual, methodological, and editorial weaknesses. Highlighted, an epistemological distortion in the study, for the research proposes to think about the discursive experience of WhatsApp as another aesthetic of verbal creation, which would have an aesthetic-linguistic focus, but the approach that gains evidence is the philosophical-sociological one with political and methodological emphasis. I suggest reinforcing the theoretical-conceptual scope of the study, directed to articulate more language theorists. Regarding the theoretical-conceptual weaknesses, it does not substantiate the concepts of eventicity and being-event, which appear as presupposed meanings for the reader; this hinders the theoretical understanding of the text. Still regarding conceptual foundation, it lacked presenting a theoretical explanatory explanation for the concept of responsiveness and expressiveness. Regarding the methodological aspect, I highlight: a) the absence of an explanation of the analytical-methodological category: contemplative reading; b) absence of more judicious systematization in data collection (production of information, selection criteria for participants, their characteristics, and types of university units and educational institution); c) selection criteria for screens and conversations on WhatsApp; d) absence of care regarding ethical issues, regarding: 1) anonymity and confidentiality of participants; and 2) participant consent; e) non-characterization of the research type, example: militant research, regarding which theoretical foundation was missing, which could be sustained in Paulo Freire, Antonio Gramsci, or another theorist who has a discussion that articulates theorists of the historical-dialectical materialism perspective. Regarding editorial aspects, we highlight: a) the absence of lexical variation, with the repeated use of terms such as: “thus” and “therefore”; b) expressions loaded with subjectivity in a scientific study that must present an objective standard, although with a perspective that can be reflective-interpretative; example of these expressions: “we are inspired” and “for us it is emblematic.” Mistakes in the use of ABNT/NBR 6023:2025, references, and citations: it is (Kaieski, Grings and Fetter, 2015, pp. 4) and should be (Kaieski; Grings; Fetter, 2015, p. 4) and the mistaken use of pp., to indicate pages. APPROVED WITH RESTRICTIONS [Revised].

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  22 Apr 2026

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 July 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  03 Jan 2026
• Accepted
  17 May 2026