LEARNING FROM THE SUBALTERN: WHAT DOES MARIA LINDALVA TEACH US ABOUT HEGEMONIC-COMMON-SENSE-IDEOLOGY AND TEXT SELECTION FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING MATERIALS?

Mulico, Lesliê Vieira

doi:10.1590/010318135865425912020

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Dossiê • Trab. linguist. apl. 59 (1) • Jan-Apr 2020 • https://doi.org/10.1590/010318135865425912020 copy

LEARNING FROM THE SUBALTERN: WHAT DOES MARIA LINDALVA TEACH US ABOUT HEGEMONIC-COMMON-SENSE-IDEOLOGY AND TEXT SELECTION FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING MATERIALS?

APRENDENDO COM O SUBALTERNIZADO: O QUE MARIA LINDALVA NOS ENSINA SOBRE A IDEOLOGIA HEGEMÔNICA DO SENSO COMUM E A SELEÇÃO DE TEXTOS PARA MATERIAIS DIDÁTICOS DE INGLÊS?

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

ABSTRACT

In the scope of vocational critical language teaching materials, designing lessons that meet professional requirements at public technical high schools committed with the agenda of critical education for citizenship is something that deserves attention. If, on the one hand, the Critical Literacy framework substantiates practices that engage us with social changes (LUKE; FREEBODY, 1997LUKE, A.; FREEBODY, P. (1997) Critical literacy and the question of normativity: an introduction. In: Muspratt, S.; Luke, A.; Freebody, P. (org.), Constructing critical literacies: teaching and learning textual practices. New Jersey: Hampton Press Inc., Cresskill, pp. 1-17.), promote opportunities for developing critical views over dominant ideologies, cultures, economies, institutions and political systems (TILIO, 2013TILIO, R.C. (2013). Repensando a abordagem comunicativa: multiletramentos em uma abordagem consciente e conscientizadora. In: Rocha, C.H. e Maciel, R.F. (org.), Língua estrangeira e formação cidadã: por entre discursos e práticas. São Paulo: Pontes Editores, pp. 51-67., 2017TILIO, R.C. (2017) Ensino crítico de língua: afinal, o que é ensinar criticamente? In: Jesus, D.M.; Zolin-Vesz, F.; Carbonieri, D. (org), Perspectivas críticas no ensino de línguas: novos sentidos para a escola. Campinas, SP: Pontes Editores, pp. 19-31.), and examine our loci of enunciation in order that we unlearn our privileges and learn from the subaltern (ANDREOTTI, 2007); on the other, the lesson materials available for technical high-school courses seem not to take these premises into account, especially the latter. In order to bridge this gap, I designed a lesson unit (Society Matters?), aimed at technical high-school 3^rd graders, wherein Maria Lindalva’s autobiography, a subaltern ex-landless activist, creates opportunities for discussions over the ideals of work, effort and success that challenge hegemonic-common-sense ideology. Resorting to constructivist bricolage (DENZIN; LINCOLN, 2005) involving her video-autobiography, the language teaching unit, the memories of my pedagogic encounters with learners from 2015 to 2018, and two different lines of interpretation that were recurrently raised throughout, I examined to what extent the interpretations over Maria Lindalva’s narrative reflect and refract neoliberal capitalist ideologies, thus contributing to developing critical posture, as well as to the selection of texts for critical language teaching materials. The results showed the analysis that validates Maria Lindalva’s achievements may be confronted by the viewpoint of her relationship with scarcity (SANTOS, 2017SANTOS, M. (2017). Toward an other globalization: from the single thought to universal conscience. Switzerland: Springer.), which favored learners’ developing critical posture; and, finally, that it was possible to take her narrative a step further showing what Maria Lindalva teaches us about selecting texts for critical language teaching materials.

Keywords:
critical literacy; hegemonic-common-sense ideology; materials design

How to bricolate the "quilt"
1)	•	Draw a line between Vološinov's (1973, 1980) and Blommaert's (2005) concepts of ideology, as well as Gramsci's (1992) and Blommaert's (2005) concepts of hegemony;
	•	Demonstrate how hegemonic-common-sense ideology is established around the ideals of "work", "effort" and "success" based on Chun's (2017) map of ideological assumptions in dialogue with Hall and O'Shea (2013);
	•	Introduce Milton Santos's (2017) concepts of "owners" and "non-owners" as analytical categories of the relationship between consumers and scarcity in the globalized world.
2)	•	Describe Maria Lindalva's narrative;
	•	Present learner's line of interpretation over her utterance (Bakhtinian analytical unit) through the concept of hegemonic-common-sense-ideology;
	•	Present teacher's line of interpretation over her narrative based on the concepts of "owners" and "non-owners";
	•	Unveil the outcomes of these interactions between teacher and learners.
3)	•	Examine the implications of these analyses for the selection of potential texts to feature their critical language teaching materials.

UNICAMP. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística Aplicada do Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL) Unicamp/IEL/Setor de Publicações, Caixa Postal 6045, 13083-970 Campinas SP Brasil, Tel./Fax: (55 19) 3521-1527 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
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1)	Who is Maria Lindalva? Where is she probably from? What does she do for a living?
2)	What do we learn about Maria Lindalva's identity judging by the way she looks and speaks?
3)	What social roles has she played in different moments of her life? How do they influence the way she sees life?
4)	Which visual metaphors in Pawel Kuczynski's illustrations (cf. activity 1) mirrors Maria Lindalva's life? Explain.
5)	What different ideologies in conflict are present in Maria Lindalva's account?

1.	Look for texts that allow participants for exposing and discussing contrasting views of specific social phenomena.
2.	Inquire to what extent the text you are considering to your language unit reflects naturalized ideas and reinforces established social views.
3.	Examine your own set of ideological beliefs. This will allow you to identify the ideas you validate and reject in a text.
4.	Also examine your locus of enunciation and make an effort to unlearn your privileges, for example, in terms of race, gender, origin, economic class, professional position and other identities. The text you choose and the activities you design reflect what you represent as a human being and refract what you reject ideologically and pedagogically.
5.	Be aware of the political trends and movements going on at the school(s) you work, in society and in the world around. The text you choose and the opportunities you create in the activities you design will probably mirror your ability to read the world critically and show your learners the way to do the same.
6.	Read the text between (inside and outside) the lines in order to identify the ideologies it reflects and refracts. Like the previous guideline, the way you understand the text will help or hinder you design activities that enable learners to develop their analytical abilities.
7.	Analyze whether the language disclosed in the text is accessible to your learners and how easily its ideological lines are recognizable. Understanding surface meaning is the first step towards plunging into its ideological aspects.
8.	Elect protagonists, if any, that encapsulate identities that are in line with the assumptions dear to critical language teaching for citizenship education. Exposing reality in the light of a subaltern's may be helpful to make learners identify and question hegemonic-common-sense ideology.
9.	Design activities that enable learners to see beyond the subaltern's immediate life achievements and foreground their social-historical processes of life deprivation. This will probably help them develop a keen awareness of the subaltern's relation with scarcity and, consequently, engage them in the experience of the otherness.