Prescritivismo e autenticidade textual: noções em revisitação

The distinction between prescriptive and descriptive approaches focuses on lexical and grammatical unitsandseldomapplies totextual communication. However, regarding the selection of a textinthe context of foreign languageteaching, the notion of textual authenticity needs to take into considerationstandardized –and prescriptible –textualpractices.In this presentation, we discuss in what sense a prescriptive approach can be derived from the constitutive and regulatory principles of textual communication. Cumulatively, we point out a distinction between authentic and natural text according to the criteria (i) compliance with the standard procedures of text building and (ii) having taken place in a real communicative context.A survey of 47 teachers of Portuguese indicates that the judgement about the naturalness of expression in a text is independent of its authenticity.