Práticas de linguagem e tempos atuais: concepções de professores de inglês em Anápolis-GO sob uma perspectiva crítica

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate and discuss how questions related to the idea of English language appear in everyday language practices (SOUSA, 2016) of seven teachers from the city of Anápolis, in the state of Goiás, Brazil. What the most varied demands for English language teaching create in terms of new pedagogical (and existential) realities, and how these new realities affect what we understand about what a language is and what shapes its learning and its speakers status is a discussion that here orbits the spheres: linguistic, cultural, political, economic and ideological. With the "detail" that the linguistic sphere is taken as the enabling stage for all other spheres to take place to occur. After all, in what other place would we have the possibility of creating so many relationships, if not the present-absent opacity (DERRIDA, 2006) of language? The empirical material was generated in June 2018, and consisted of an identification questionnaire, and seven meetings recorded in audio format interviews. Throughout the study I refer to these data as organic records because, considering from a critical perspective of problematizing practice (PENNYCOOK, 2001; SILVESTRE, 2017), it was possible to establish several relations bundles (FOUCAULT, 2010), which went beyond the mere establishment of categories. This organicity of data is presented in the form of an organized body of knowledge (ESTEBAN, 2010), in intersection with the literature survey, respecting qualitative-interpretative research parameters (MOREIRA & CALEFFE, 2006; MOITA LOPES 2006; BORTONI- RICARDO, 2009). These intersections were based on contemporary studies in the area of Applied Linguistics, such as Bernat (2008); Biesta (2015); Garcia & Wei (2014); hooks (2013); Janks (2014); Jordan (2014); Liberali (2015); Lopes & Borges (2015); Maciel (2015); Moita-Lopes (2006); Monte-Mór (2014; 2015); Pennycook (2001, 2012); Person (2014); Pinto (2007); Quijano (2005); Rajagopalan (2003; 2011); Silvestre (2017); Skliar (2006), Tagata (2017), among others, and led me to some more recurring themes, to convergences with literature raised, and also to some divergences. In general terms, I bring this into four discussion axes, which focus on the responses of the participating teachers to the questions "How would you describe your English classroom teaching practice?"; "How would you explain what the English language is", "The importance of the English language in the present times"; and "The question of linguistic authority". Specifically, the discussion on these axes focused on: the notion of the English language no longer as a monolithic block linked to the figure of one or some nation-states, but to linguistic practices embodied in locality; and the importance of discussing teaching practices considering diversified demands, so that we can work on aspects not only of qualification, but of socialization and subjectification (BIESTA, 2015, PESSOA & HOELZLE, 2017), so that we strengthen the people who are living these linguistic practices, and not an abstract idea of language that only strengthens institutional devices that make us believe that only they have the right to design interpretations, and that only they have the power of designation (hooks, 2013)