O duolingo como trilha de aprendizagem : uma análise sob a ótica da semântica de frames.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the Duolingo path through its units, lessons, and tasks from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective grounded in Frame Semantics, and multimodality studies. The general objective is to investigate how the application organizes and promotes meaning making in modern foreign language learning — specifically French — through the integrated orchestration of verbal language, images, sound, and interaction. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative and analytical-cognitive approach to map the mental operations and the organization of the corpus that comprises the digital interface. The analyses show that the platform's pedagogical process is not structured around abstract grammatical rules, but rather through the systematic activation of shared situational and sociocultural frames. The results indicate that meaning-making occurs through an integrated multimodal orchestration, highlighting the recurrent use of highly conventional metonymies and conceptual metaphors, particularly the updating of the metaphor LEARNING IS A JOURNEY into LEARNING IS A GAME. Furthermore, it was found that gamification plays a structuring role by articulating mechanisms of progress, reward, feedback, and repetition, configuring the superframes LEARNING and COMPETITION, and promoting learner self-regulation and sustained engagement. In conclusion, Duolingo can be understood as a multimodal learning ecology contributing to the theoretical and practical advancement of the field of Cognitive Linguistics applied to learning in digital mobile environments.