The Merleau-Ponty theory of language and bibliotherapy

Abstract

The article presents the problem of language, with a phenomenological approach, as treated by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Husserl considered the language as an object of thought, the essence of a universal grammar. Merleau-Ponty supported the language as a means of communication by excellence, whose signs reflect the culture and that the words have corporeality. The theory of expression Merleau-pontyan admits two languages: the spoken speech and the speaker speech. The spoken language is the set of meanings of a language; the speaker language is the transfiguration of these meanings. It is of the speaker speech, the producer of meanings, that bibliotherapy concerns. We report a Reading Therapy Program developed in a public school within the Brazilian Island of Santa Catarina. This program included reading, storytelling and dramatization of fictional texts. It bet on the involvement of students with the playful and poetic literature and gave credit to the therapeutic possibilities. The dialogue after the story (the experience of others), socialization (relaxation and joy) and the resumption of the text were considered therapeutic exercises. It was concluded that bibliotherapy is an alternative and unpretentious treatment in that speech, reading, storytelling or drama can act as a therapy.