Critical language teacher education in Brazil: contamination of narratives and dancing as a decolonial option

Abstract Summary

Abstract :

The aim of this work is to present and discuss how under-graduate students majoring in Portuguese and English languages at a public university blend narratives and dancing to reiterate their identities. This is part of a broader ongoing research on critical literacies and decolonial perspectives in Brazilian Central-West context. The qualitative and intersubjective methodology assumes such students as co-authors of meaning making. The theories include the Bakhtinian notion of language, the coexistence of perspectives in unresolved dialogues within Applied Linguistics from a southern perspective (PENNYCOOK; MAKONI, 2019), critical perspectives (STREET, 1984), post-colonial and decolonial visions (MENEZES DE SOUZA, 2019, MIGNOLO; WALSH, 2018) and postabyssal thought (SOUSA SANTOS) 2014). Doing English VII in the third year, students produced a video clip to problematize a theme, of their choice, as their final evaluation in the first term in 2017. For this presentation, a particular video clip exploring LGBT is analysed in the light of the aforementioned theoretical-methodological references. The result indicates critical and decolonial perspectives enable students to interpret discourses and the world around 'us-them' as criss-crossed boundaries and enact through strategies the new media afford to delink and relink university from/with complex minoritized ontology-epistemology-methodology. References MENEZES DE SOUZA, L. T. Introduction. Theorizing the South(s). In: FINARD, K. R. (Orgs.) (2019). English in the South. Londrina: EDUEL, pp. 87-24. MIGNOLO, W. D.; WALSH, C. (2018). On decoloniality. Concepts. Analytics. Praxis. Durham, London: Duke University Press. PENNYCOOK, A.; MAKONI, S. (2020). Innovations and challenges in Applied Linguistics from the global South. London, New York: Routledge. SOUSA SANTOS, B. DE. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: justice against epistemicide. London, New York: Routledge. STREET, B. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge: CUP.

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