Dialogue Circle - a Tool for Applied Linguistics to Deal with Beliefs, Emotions, Conflicts, and Paradoxes

Abstract

Studies about beliefs in Applied Linguistics have been developed based on contextual and discursive methodological approaches, which require new research instruments and data analysis methods to consider the participants’ histories, experiences, and emotions (CRUZ, 2017; HAUS, 2018; KALAJA et al., 2018). Based on that, this work presents a narrowed portion of a doctoral research that investigated beliefs of twelve undergraduate students of the undergraduate degree in English Language from Universidade Federal do Paraná, campus Curitiba, future English teachers, about English pronunciation. This work aims to present the circle of dialogue, from the domains of Restorative Justice, as a research instrument that contributes in the face of the difficulties established by the interrelations between beliefs and emotions. At the end of each circle, holding the talking piece, the participants answered the question: “How did you feel in this circle of dialogue?”. The results indicate a positive evaluation of the participants about the instrument, mostly related to aspects such as: respect to the speech, appreciation of ideas by receiving the listeners’ attention, possibility of speaking without interruptions, contact with different opinions and histories, and contact with the participants’ own beliefs, which were unconscious up to that point. The data also suggest that behavior reeducation is needed in different social interactions we act in. This is a work that may enrich research, teaching, and human relations in different contexts.

Keywords:
beliefs; pronunciation; research methodology; circles of dialogue