Between the Desire and the Need to Learn Languages

Some Thoughts About What is Also at Stake in this Process

Abstract

Based on a discoursive perspective, this article intends to analyze some discoursive segments produced by undergraduate teachers in oral interviews, searching for identifying some foreign language representations of learning, which can appear in their speech. As a theoretical support, we are going to develop two concepts from psychoanalysis (need and desire), and also the idea of technologies of the self, developed by Foucault in his work. Considering the results of the analysis, we can conclude that learning a foreign language requires not only specific knowledge, such as vocabulary or grammar, but also involves unconscious processes which constitute the subject and his/her identity as a teacher. This identity, however, is conditioned by history and social meanings, which are produced by symbolic and imaginary relations.