Literacy and literacies as interactional practices

Abstract

Educational Public Policies (EPP) have demonstrated strong socio-interactionist tendencies. For this reason, it is possible to identify EPP implementation strategies grounded in a conception of language as a social instrument, which orient these policies toward a discourse focused on literacy and on the real conditions of teaching practices. In an effort to add complexity to these strategies and to contribute to discussions on this topic, this article aims to analyze representations of literacy and early literacy practices in Basic Education within the framework of the National Education System (NES). The theoretical framework is situated in the interdisciplinary field of EPP, considering the interface between literacy research and Bakhtinian studies of language, which support the micro-analytical procedures. Complementary Law No. 220, of October 31, 2025, was adopted as the corpus of investigation, characterizing the study as documentary research with a qualitative approach. Content Analysis (CA) was employed as the technique for data treatment. The results point to a possible asymmetry between the NES proposal and the limited operationalization of interactional language practices in the context of Basic Education. At times, this asymmetry tends to weaken the genuinely catalytic nature of literacy in relation to other EPP in Brazil.