Constructing the Multilingual Subject in Post-Truth Brazilian Context

• In Event: 35.035 - Bilingual and Language Teacher Education in a Post-Truth Era: Critical Perspectives From Brazil and the United States

Abstract

a. Objectives: With the intensification of globalization, there is a significant change in our current social, cultural, and linguistic world panorama (Blommaert; Rampton, 2011). Within this scenario, the expansion of English as a world language endowed with superior asset value has become the dominant master narrative (Rajagopalan, 2009). Ironically, in Brazil, a country that is markedly multilingual (Oliveira, 2009), this master narrative has propelled significant policy-curricular-pedagogical changes in bilingual teacher education over the years. While there has been a substantial growth in the number of English-Portuguese PK-12 bilingual schools, programs integrating indigenous languages, for example, are non-existent. Yet, policy parameters for regulating and guiding dominant programmatic approaches to bilingual education have become an urgent demand. These policies continue to influence bilingual teacher education programs in ways that place English as the most sought after linguistic capital. In light of this dynamics, how do in-service bilingual teachers construct their multilingual identities and that of their students? What relevance does this have for bilingual-language teacher education in a post-truth era? This paper presents the results of a study aimed at understanding how in-service bilingual teachers narrate-position themselves and their students in relation to their linguistic-repertoires, professional-identities, and policy-dynamics.

b. Theoretical Framework: This paper takes a multi-conceptual approach where language teacher identity (Pavlenko et al., 2004), language ideologies (Busch, 2015), and the concepts of positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990); interculturality (Maher, 2007), culture (Kramsch, 1998), linguistic repertoire (Busch, 2015), and bilingual subject (García, 2009) provide critical perspectives to interpret how in-service bilingual teachers construct their multilingual identities and that of their students.

Modes of Inquiry: Using autobiographical narratives (Busch, 2015) as an inquiry approach, the paper investigates the ways in which the research participants positioned themselves in relation to (a) their multilingual repertoires, (b) those of their students, and (c) the professional scenario in which they work.

Data Sources: Teachers’ narratives analyzed were produced orally, recorded and later transcribed. Teachers were invited to draw their "linguistic portraits" (Busch, 2010) and to orally interpret these. These interpretations, as well as their narratives, served as objects of analysis.

Conclusions: Results confirm the heterogeneity of teaching positions in relation to teachers’ linguistic repertoires and that of their students. While some research participants positioned English as a tool for mobility, others placed it as a foreign language with which they do not have an affective bond. Portuguese, on the other hand, was positioned as a language through which it is possible to perceive the world and to show affect and emotions. The linguistic repertoires of the students were narrated as deficient by some teachers, while others recognized the translanguaging practices as legitimate. Teachers perceived their professional environments positively, or as impediments to productive teaching and learning practices.

Scholarly Significance: Understanding how in-service bilingual teachers in Brasil narrate-position themselves and their students as multilingual subjects, in light of dominant/post-truth narratives, provide us with ways to re-design teacher education programs from the perspective of “knowledge activism” seeking to promote democratic perspectives that foster “critical hope.”

Author

• Antonieta Megale, Instituto Singularidades, Brazil.