From Discriminating to Discrimination: The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity 3031135431, 9783031135439

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Alessandra Del Ré Patrícia Falasca Juliane Noack Napoles Editors

From Discriminating to Discrimination The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity

From Discriminating to Discrimination

Alessandra Del Ré  •  Patrícia Falasca Juliane Noack Napoles Editors

From Discriminating to Discrimination The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity

Editors Alessandra Del Ré Department Linguistics, Literature & Classics São Paulo State University Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil

Patrícia Falasca Institute for Social Work Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, Brandenburg, Germany

Juliane Noack Napoles Institute for Social Work Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, Brandenburg, Germany

Jointly published with Editora Unesp, São Paulo, Brazil. ISBN 978-3-031-13543-9    ISBN 978-3-031-13544-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6 © Fundacao Editora da Unesp 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

“The most human thing we have is language,” says Theodor Fontane. And it is also people who underestimate its effect – and this continues to this day. A good 2 years ago, at a time when the coronavirus pandemic was paralyzing society, a group of young scientists at the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU) Cottbus-Senftenberg started with the idea of organizing an international conference on the importance and effects of language – courageously, confidently, and decisively their call went out into the world to participate in this conference with exciting contributions. It is admirable with how much enthusiasm and passion international and interdisciplinary connections could be revived, expanded, and intensified in preparation for this online conference. And where enthusiasm and passion are at work, success ultimately follows. The conference became a major event, at which experts and participants from all over the world discussed and shed new light on LANGUAGE and its multidimensional effects – here, more than ever, linguistic expertise was combined with far-­ reaching social dimensions, because language shapes, language connects, and language creates individuality – but language also separates, language hurts, language condemns, and excludes. The publication of the conference papers that is now available in this volume provides valuable impulses for the conscious use of language as something that connects people and raises awareness of previously unused resources and the prevailing discrimination through/about words. It remains to be wished that school and family, politics and society, business and science draw their conclusions and derive appropriate action. I congratulate the authors on this valuable book and wish all interested readers that reading the book may inspire and activate them  – for more humanity in this world! Birgit Hendrischke Central Equal Opportunities Officer of the Brandenburg University of Technology(BTU) Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany v

Preface

2020 will certainly be reminded, discussed, investigated and looked at for generations to come. With all its challenges, that year counts to what we now know was the first year of a worldwide event that took over the following years and which developments are yet to be fully discovered” can be considered. Facing a pandemic, the need to put ourselves in lockdowns and the new ways of life that made us recognise the fragility of what we thought were our basic rights made deep changes in our society as a whole. In that same year, as we were trying to understand and deal with all the new pieces of information of our new way of life, we were also still battling old known issues and enemies. In many ways, it would have been easier to just focus on the apparent bigger picture, but, at the same time, all the new structures, working from home, the need to be online all the time and so many other changes brought some of those old battles to light, making them sometimes even more evident than before. Questions like “who really has access to the Internet?”, “who can keep working from home?”, “who will be able to keep their jobs?” and many others led us to face and discover new aspects of discrimination and how deep some societal wounds can be. Going through 2020 also meant, therefore, to look for and recognise some roots and developments of long-discussed topics, shedding new lights on them and finding new ways of dealing with them in our everyday lives. With that in mind, we considered that the reinforcement of the possibilities of putting people from all over the world together to discuss the same topic, while being watched by anyone with Internet access around the globe, would be a great opportunity to think about what constitutes discrimination, where it comes from and some ways to fight it. This led to us to organise and present the international event (in online format) “From Discriminating to Discrimination – The Influence of Language on identity and subjectivity”, held on September 23, 2020. In the event, linguists, psychologists, language teachers, social workers and pedagogues got together with a heterogeneous audience to discuss the main topic of the conference: how discriminating

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can be recognised as a natural and important ability of the human being in the early stages of life and, after that, how to avoid discriminatory acts against others. During the event, in addition to our participation and speeches, we counted on lectures by Prof. Dr. Christelle Dodane (Paul Valéry University, Montpellier 3, France/CAPES-PRINT), Prof. Associate Dr. Amina M. Turton (University of Texas, USA) and the language teacher Miguel Quintana (University of Texas, USA). The event was hosted by the Brandenburg University of Technology, in Cottbus, Germany, in cooperation with the São Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil. The conference was organised with the assistance and support of Mr. Thorsten Heimann (Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany/CAPES-PRINT). This publication is an outcome from that event: a result of fruitful discussions and of the strong feeling that the movement that started with those lectures could not end when the cameras and computers went off that day1. The discussions held during the online conference took into account the important and necessary dialogue between linguistics – especially language as a form of building subjectivity – and social sciences, also raising aspects of teaching practice as essential points to minimise discrimination and promote integration and acceptance in a broad sense, understanding the preponderant role of language in recognising what is different (discriminating), without diminishing or excluding it (discrimination). More specifically, the event proposal took into account that discrimination is the distinction between discriminatory stimuli, followed by discriminatory reactions (Wirtz 2020). A discriminatory reaction is therefore a response based on a value judgement (conscious/non-conscious) or an antecedent that may be perceived to be of unequal nature or intent. In the sense of a formal and abstract definition, discrimination can first be understood as the use of categorical distinctions, that is, supposedly clear and separable distinctions  – for the establishment and justification of a stage for potentially unequal treatment that can result in social disadvantages (Scherr 2016). In the legal sense, discrimination is a perceived difference or difference in the treatment of a person based on one (or more) legally protected category (i.e. race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion) without any objective reasons justifying such difference in treatment (Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency Germany 2017). We believe and argue that these categories of discrimination are linguistically acquired and are a linguistic product and, in turn, linguistically mediated. Therefore, linguistic processes play a central role with regard to discrimination, which is often scientifically underestimated and, therefore, we proposed this discussion. After the online conference, it was clear to us that this publication would be an important step to take and we then invited some of the authors who presented in this conference and some colleagues and experts from around the world to contribute to this

 For the videos of the conference, please access: https://www.b-tu.de/en/fg-­erziehungswissen schaften/research/identity/language-and-subjectivity#c245742 1

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discussion, keeping it as rich and interesting as possible, for people from different countries, tribes, fields and theoretical frameworks. The idea is, therefore, to understand the path taken by differentiation, from the beginning of the child's language development – when discrimination (of sounds, gestures, etc.) is essential for the acquisition of language to occur – until the moment when differentiation, discrimination, ceases to be an essential factor and becomes a means of social segregation. Originally, this publication was conceived to be divided in four main topics, which would accommodate the chapters into the four thematics of the lectures held on the online conference: “What are linguistic prerequisites for discrimination?”; “How are linguistic prerequisites conveyed in regards of subjectivity?”; “How and why is subjectivity linguistically preserved?” and “Which forms of expression have verbal judgements and what are their consequences for people?”. As the publication matured and the chapters started to give it a more palpable form, we could notice that these internal divisions were not that relevant anymore, since there was a strong dialog between the chapters and that would go far beyond the somewhat limiting walls of these separations. There is still a starting and an ending point. Across the book, we travel from the basic human ability to discriminate (to differentiate) sounds, words and objects as children start their journey in this world. We go through the language acquisition processes, how subjectivity is built in and through the language, the use of humour by children in speech, and the importance of belonging and of action research. We come to discussions on educational settings – in early childhood education, in foreign language classrooms and in the processes of learning a welcoming language. Every chapter is linked to the main idea of this big discussion: how do we, as human beings, go from discriminating to discrimination? Every author discusses this issue in their own fields of studies and inside their own theoretical frameworks. Prof. Dr. Christelle Dodane’s chapter, “From Sound Discrimination to Sound Identification: The importance of Child Directed Speech and Interactional Cues During Language Acquisition”, opens the book, discussing how the act of discriminating (in the sense of differentiating) language sounds and the prosodic in the child directed speech is essential for language acquisition in the early stages of a baby’s life. In this context, we can see that discriminating is part of the child’s everyday life and it makes them understand and make sense of the world around them, as they are more and more capable of differentiating sounds (and even objects). The second chapter in the book, by Prof. Dr. Cristina Name, “Language Perception Development”, continues the reflections started by the previous one, presenting the role played by speech perception in the language acquisition process, as babies discriminate – differentiate – the language spoken by their community from other sounds. By doing this, they narrow their perception and specialise on the sounds that really matter – the ones from the language they will need to communicate with people around them, thus making the language acquisition process possible. In the chapter “Language, Subjectivity and Alterity: Humour in Children’s Discourse”, by Prof. Dr. Alessandra Del Ré and Prof. Dr. Marina Célia Mendonça,

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the discussion focuses on language acquisition and the way children constitute themselves as subjects in and through language and the importance of the other (alterity) in this process. This debate considers the acquisition of humour by the child. In this scenario and understanding that the one does not exist without the other, and that the other is part of what constitutes the self, discriminatory acts can be faced as acts against the self. This chapter also reflects on what could be a way to banish and fight discrimination considering the ideas conveyed in the text. The chapter that follows, written by Prof. Dr. Angelina Nunes de Vasconcelos and Prof. Dr. Nadja Vieira, “Discrimination in Early Childhood Education: Considerations About Communication and Ethical Responsibility in Pedagogical Practices”, raises the discussion on how the use of psychological theories in school settings by teachers tend to make it difficult to see the child as an individual with particular developmental processes, thus creating discrimination towards the children who do not fall into the closed and pre-estabilished developmental phases proposed by some psychological theorists. The authors also shed light on how to adapt this educational standard by using language towards a more empathetic and including environment in early childhood education. The chapter written by Prof. Dr. Helza Ricarte Lanz, “Doing Research with Children – Case Studies Challenging Bias of Understanding the World”, discusses the idea of action research as a means of helping children have a better life by the interventions originated from this kind of research. In the chapter, the author shows the readers how this is possible by describing two case studies: one of them in a refugee shelter in Germany and the other one in a Quilombola-community in Brazil. In those case studies, it is possible to recognise how the interventions made by researchers might have a positive effect in the way children are seen by their families and their communities and also how important this kind of research might be as it points out to possible bigger issues that children may be experiencing – and offer them the support they need and deserve. In the chapter “Preservation of Identity and Subjectivity: Philosophy, Linguistics and Social Work in Dialog to Fight Discrimination” (Prof. Dr. Juliane Noack Napoles and Dr. Patrícia Falasca), the concepts of identity and subjectivity are discussed both in a philosophical and in a linguistic sense, in order to provide some insights on how discrimination occurs in regard to our identity and subjectivity. According to that discussion, the text focuses on some action-leading possibilities by understanding and using the power of language and its use in professions and professionalisation in order to move past discrimination. Aiming at discussing situations that permeate the lives of deaf people, the chapter “A reflection About the Historical Course of the Brazilian Sign Language: School, Official Documents and Fighting Discrimination”, by Prof. Dr. Alessandra Jacqueline Vieira and Dr. Rosângela Nogarini Hilário, leads us through the history and the developments involving the Brazilian Sign Language. Since subjectivity is built in and through language, as the authors defend, preventing deaf people from having their language recognised as an official language is to prevent them from becoming subjects in the society they live in. The recognition of the Sign Language

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and the need to spread it to all contexts of human activity is of vital importance to fight discrimination in many levels. In “Cultural Diversity in Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: Opening Up to Dialogue and Understanding Plural Identities”, the authors Dr. Gabriela Ribeiro de Campos and Prof. Dr. Cláudia Helena Daher shed light on the topic of culture and identities in the context of teaching-learning of foreign languages. They argue that the culture can be used in these contexts as a way to reproduce discriminative acts or to break this chain. The authors propose a teaching-learning environment where cultures are seen in their multiplicity, in a non-hierarchised way, in order to achieve a better understanding of the differences, creating possibilities for a better relationship between the subjects. The chapter “Portuguese as a Welcoming Language: Breaking Linguistic and Cultural Boundaries”, by Prof. Dr. Nildicéia Aparecida Rocha and Prof. Dr. Rosangela Sanches da Silveira Gileno, presents a project on teaching Portuguese to refugees in Brazil. The environment in which the language is taught and how students are treated in the process of learning the language matter, and this makes a huge difference in how they fit in the new conditions and the society they are inserted in. To welcome those people linguistically (and also in a broader sense) is an important way of fighting and avoiding any kind of discriminatory acts against them. Literacy can be a means of segregation. It can, as history tells us, divide the ones who are rich, and detain the power and the knowledge from the ones who are poor, have no power and no access to knowledge. Literacy can be linked to freedom, to hope and to the achievement of a better life. In the chapter “A Discussion on Literacy for Young and Adults: Literature Classics in Dialogue with Paulo Freire”, Prof. Dr. Vanessa Cristina Girotto Nery, M.  A. Renata de Fátima Gonçalves, M.A.  Thais Aparecida Bento Reis and Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Orofino present us the idea of giving young and adults the possibility of reading literary classics as they are taught to read and write – and to make sense of what they read, write and of the world that surrounds them. Facing literacy like this makes it far more important than the plain decodification of written language symbols. Literacy is, in this sense, resistance and emancipation. Closing the discussions in the book, the chapter “The Challenges of Bildung in the Anthropocene in the Relationship Between the Oppressed and the Literacy”, by Dr. Karina Limonta Vieira, exposes the importance of considering Bildung and the access to literacy in a broad sense, as a necessary step to fight oppression in the Anthropocene. The author raises the importance of considering Paulo Freire’s conception of oppression and of literacy to open up possibilities to change the world we live in by human action. It is important to mention that this publication is a result of a partnership between PPGLLP/UNESP-FCLAr, in Brazil, and the Brandenburg University of Technology, in Cottbus, Germany, within the scope of the CAPES-Print project “Childhood language and subjectivity: Speaking and writing in the context of acquisition and teaching/learning”. And before finishing this introduction, it is necessary to give some thanks and credit to people that were part of this project at some point. During the time we were

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preparing the manuscript that originated this book, many things happened and many changes had to be made in our original arrangements, which culminated in the version now published. Life has its own ways of moving forward, and it is not always possible to keep up with our first envisions and plans. In this sense, we dearly thank our colleagues Mr. Thorsten Heimann, Prof. Dr. Amina Burton and Miguel Quintana for their dedication to this idea and for the efforts made on the onset of this project and discussion. We would also like to take the opportunity to thank some colleagues that made this publication possible. The chapters were all peer-reviewed internally (the authors read and reviewed each other’s texts) and externally (other experts in the fields read and reviewed the chapters). We thank the authors of this book for their involvement and for the discussions that arose from every new encounter with each other’s works. We also thank the experts that took part in this publication for their dedication and the time and expertise they invested to read, review and discuss one or more chapters that now compose this volume. We also thank our colleague Mariana Zeferino for her essential help and dedication in the preparation of the manuscripts that originated this volume. Having said that, we welcome you into the discussions proposed in this work and we remain open for the discussions that are yet to come on the path from discriminating to discrimination. May the conjunction of research and practice change, little by little, the scenario where discrimination is used to hurt and segregate people. That is our wish. Araraquara, Brazil  Alessandra Del Ré Cottbus, Germany  Patrícia Falasca Cottbus, Germany  Juliane Noack Napoles

References FEDERALANTI-DISCRIMINATIONAGENCY GERMANY. Rechtlicher Diskriminierungsschutz. Available from: https://www.antidiskriminierungsstelle.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/ DE/publikationen/Handbuch_Diskriminierungsschutz/Vorleseversion.pdf?__blob= publicationFile&v=4. 3. Ed., 2017. Access: 01.04.2022. SCHERR, A. Diskriminierung/Antidiskriminierung: Begriffe und Grundlagen. Available from: https://www.bpb.de/apuz/221573/diskriminierung-­antidiskriminierung-­begriffe-­und-­ grundlagen, 2016. Access: 03.04.2022. DISKRIMINATION. In: WIRTZ, M. A. (Eds.). Dorsch – Lexikon der Psychologie, 2020. Available from : https://portal.hogrefe.com/dorsch/diskrimination/. Access: 03.04.2022.

Acknowledgements

Scientific Review Committee Prof. Dr. Cristiany Morais de Queiroz – Damas Faculty, Brazil Prof. Dr. Eliza Maria Barbosa – São Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil Prof. Dr. Ivani dos Santos Souza Fusellier – Paris 8 University, France Prof. Dr. Maria Olímpia Ribeiro do Vale Almada – Mato Grosso State University (UNEMAT), Brazil Prof. Dr. Marianne Carvalho Bezerra Cavalcante – Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), Brazil Prof. Dr. Marlete Sandra Diedrich – Universidade de Passo Fundo (UPF), Brazil Prof. Dr. Renata Maria Facuri Coelho Marchezan – São Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil

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1 From  Sound Discrimination to Sound Identification: The Importance of Child-­Directed Speech and Interactional Cues During Language Acquisition����������������������������������������������������������   1 Christelle Dodane 2 Language Perception Development����������������������������������������������������������  13 Cristina Name 3 Language,  Subjectivity and Alterity: Humour in Children’s Discourse����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  23 Alessandra Del Ré and Marina Célia Mendonça 4 Discrimination  in Early Childhood Education: Considerations About Communication and Ethical Responsibility in Pedagogical Practices������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  35 Angelina Nunes de Vasconcelos and Nadja Vieira 5 Doing  Research with Children: Case Studies Challenging Bias of Understanding the World����������������������������������������������������������������������  43 Helza Ricarte Lanz 6 Preservation  of Identity and Subjectivity: Philosophy, Linguistics and Social Work in Dialogue to Fight Discrimination����������������������������  57 Juliane Noack Napoles and Patrícia Falasca 7 A  Reflexion About the Historical Course of the Brazilian Sign Language: School, Official Documents and Fighting Discrimination��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  69 Alessandra Jacqueline Vieira and Rosângela Nogarini Hilário 8 Cultural  Diversity in Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: Opening up to Dialogue and Understanding Plural Identities��������������  83 Gabriela Ribeiro de Campos and Cláudia Helena Daher

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9 Portuguese  as a Welcoming Language: Breaking Linguistic and Cultural Boundaries������������������������������������������������������������������������   93 Nildiceia Aparecida Rocha and Rosangela Sanches da Silveira Gileno 10 A  Discussion on Literacy for Young and Adults: Literature Classics in Dialogue with Paulo Freire��������������������������������������������������  103 Vanessa Cristina Girotto Nery, Renata de Fátima Gonçalves, Thais Aparecida Bento Reis, and Elizabeth Orofino 11 T  he Challenges of Bildung in the Anthropocene in the Relationship Between the Oppressed and the Literacy������������������������  115 Karina Limonta Vieira Afterword����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  127

Chapter 1

From Sound Discrimination to Sound Identification: The Importance of Child-­Directed Speech and Interactional Cues During Language Acquisition Christelle Dodane

Abstract  For a baby, an essential prerequisite for building the syntactic knowledge of their mother tongue is to segment this speech flow into constituents. Indeed, the speech flow is continuous but the language is discrete. In this context, one issue is related to the huge intraindividual and interindividual variability present in the speech signal. So, how can babies break the linguistic code? How can they manage to extract invariant representations of the sounds of their mother tongue and to associate a meaning with those sequences of sounds from the continuous speech flow? A first attempt to answer these questions was made by the researchers in favor of the “prosodic bootstrapping” theory. Indeed, the speech signal is very rich and redundant and contains a lot of information about important linguistic units. Moreover, adults use a very specific register when addressing to their child, the motherese (child-directed speech), which provides a simplified language model with very specific phonological and prosodic characteristics. In addition, there is a lot of information provided by the social context, the importance of joint attention, and the multimodal essence of language. All those mechanisms play an important role in reducing the indeterminacy of the referent target or meaning during interactions between the child and their parents. The current paper represents an attempt to sketch a scenario to describe the processes of language acquisition at the very beginning of life, which really considers the child-directed speech as a privileged learning environment to facilitate this process, in which discriminating (sounds, speech signals, etc.) is an important ability for babies. Keywords  Perception · Child-directed speech · Language acquisition

For more details on this topic, see the chapter by Name, in this book. C. Dodane (*) Montpellier 3 University, France, Praxiling (UMR CNRS 5267), Montpellier, France © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_1

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1.1 Introduction The babies impregnation with the sounds of their environment begins long before birth, since their ear has been mature from the fifth month of gestation. Intrauterine sensitivity of babies is above all prosodic, because it manages to cross the abdominal wall of the mother (low frequencies have a privileged transmission, from 175 to 500 Hz, corresponding to the prosodic informations), and the voices, although distorted, clearly emerge from the ambient background and in particular the maternal voice (Lecanuet 1997). Because of this primacy of prosody before birth, babies should maintain a very musical sensitivity to the languages spoken around them. Thus, using the technique of non-nutritive sucking, researchers have shown that babies prefer human voices over other sounds (DeCasper and Fifer 1980) and in particular female voices (Mehler et al. 1978) and their mother’s voice (DeCasper and Fifer 1980). In addition, from the age of two days, they prefer language addressed to children (Fernald 1989; Cooper and Aslin 1990) with very exaggerated prosodic properties. On the other hand, babies are able to recognize a story read to them before birth (Spencer and DeCasper 1987), even if the speech is filtered to only let pass low frequencies. Newborns as young as two days old are able to distinguish their mother tongue from another language and distinguish languages with different rhythmic characteristics (Moon et al. 1993; Bertoncini 1993). Babies are also sensitive to the intonation contours of their mother tongue. Thus, research has shown that from the age of 6–7 weeks, they are able to differentiate syllables with identical phonetic content but affected by different intonation contours (Morse 1972; Kuhl and Miller 1982). In addition, they are able to differentiate intonation contours from their native language and respond adequately to the messages that these contours convey, such as request to wake up, pay attention, and make eye contact (Papousek et al. 1990). Later, these capacities will extend to other languages (Best 1993): babies from 6 to 8 months are able to differentiate the prosodic contrasts produced in language addressed to the child in two different languages, their mother tongue (English) and a foreign language (Spanish). Other research has shown that this prosodic sensitivity of babies also applies to words in their mother tongue. Thus, from their first months, they are sensitive to strongly accented words located at the end of clauses (Menyuk 1977). This sensitivity will gradually evolve toward a processing gradually more centered on the phonetic level (Jusczyk et al. 1993). It is therefore prosody that allows the children to begin to become aware of the words of their mother tongue, before being able to focus on the information carried by the different phonemes. At the same time, understanding of the meaning of words is developing, since babies aged 10–12 months already understand about 30 words in context (Witko and Ghimenton 2019: 134). In terms of their segmentation abilities, babies are able to use prosodic cues at a very early stage to localize major linguistic boundaries in their mother tongue, like clausal cues. Thus, studies (Jusczyk 1989; Jusczyk and Krumhansl 1993) have shown that English-speaking babies aged four and half months prefer correctly segmented speech and music: they listen longer to speech with pauses inserted at phrase

1  From Sound Discrimination to Sound Identification: The Importance…

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boundaries than to those with pauses inserted within phrases. This ability persists in nine-month-old babies, even if sounds are filtered to let pass only the prosodic level (Jusczyk et al. 1992). The authors conclude that intonation contour changes, including lower intonation and lengthening of sounds preceding the boundaries, are important elements in directing segmentation in the baby. These abilities are not limited to the prosodic level, since at the segmental level, babies are able to discriminate the phonetic contrasts present in their mother tongue, but also a wide variety of contrasts belonging to languages which are unknown to them (Kikuyu, Hindi, Nlakapamuk, Zulu, etc.). There are very few studies where babies have failed, leading researchers to label them as “superdiscriminators” or “universal phoneticians.”1 Thus, as early as in the 1970s, researchers showed that babies aged 1–4 months were able to discriminate between sounds belonging to different categories but did not respond to the same acoustic difference within the same category (Eimas et al. 1971), which was called categorical perception. Later, babies will experience two phases of perceptual reorganization, allowing them to focus on the phonemes of their mother tongue, first on vowels, around six months (Kuhl 1990, 1991, 1992), and then on consonants, around 10–12 months (Werker and Tees 1984). These reorganizations are accompanied by a strong deterioration in their ability to discriminate non-native vowels and consonants, which they perceived very well before. These studies show therefore that acculturation with the mother tongue is progressive. From 6 to 10 months and up to the age of 18–24 months, babies begin to recognize the phonemes of their mother tongue, as well as their functional value.2 It is only from the age of 18 months that they will learn functionality, syntax, and morphology. Perception is therefore a complex and active process that requires different types of processing on the part of the child. The baby shows a very high sensitivity to the rhythm and intonation of their mother tongue and to prosodic cues marking important linguistic boundaries and words. These abilities concern not only the prosodic level but also the segmental level, and the successive reorganizations experienced by the children during their first year of life (vowels, consonants) allow them to gradually focus on the phonic system of their mother tongue to gradually internalize its different sounds. The main question we would like to ask here is how the process of language acquisition could be facilitated by mechanisms to direct infants’ attention to important signals of the speech signal through the child-directed speech (Dodane 2003; Dodane, 2020). Indeed, according to interactionist models (Vygotsky 1962; Bruner 1974), the children learn through interaction with their adult partners, and language is one of the instruments of socialization. Learning to communicate therefore begins early in life, and adults are able to differentiate and attribute meaning to their babies’ productions from the very first cry. Conversely, from their first vocalizations and depending on the reaction of adults, babies will gradually learn to differentiate their

 For more details, see the chapter by name, in this book.  For more details, see the chapter by name, in this book.

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vocal productions according to the context and the effect they seek to have on those around them. In this context of constant interaction, adults adapt their way of speaking to the capacities of their child and adopt a particular register, the child-directed speech, also called “motherese” in English, or “baby talk”, which is found in a large number of cultures around the world.3 It is a particular way of speaking, extremely simplified in terms of syntax, meaning, and phonological repertoire, and it is interesting to note that these vocal adjustments are made in an intuitive and natural way and rarely take place outside of the context of interaction with a baby (Fernald and Simon 1984).

1.2 Role of Child-Directed Speech During Language Acquisition Child-directed speech contains significant information about the structural organization of language (Morgan and Demuth 1996; Morgan et al. 1987, 1996), and the child could use this information to infer the appropriate matches with the syntactic properties of its native language if this information is sufficiently salient in the speech signal. This is the case with prosodic signals which correspond to the boundaries of different units (Morgan et al. 1987), from the highest (sentences, clauses) to the lowest level (words), for example, stressed syllables (Gleitman and Wanner 1982). These might help children begin to categorize words at the lexical level. These signals will vary according to the languages and the specificities of their prosodic organization (e.g., frontiers between the clauses marked by a longer pause, increasing or a decreasing of pitch contour, lengthening of the clause-final syllable). On this subject, see the works by Luce and Charles-Luce (1983) and Cooper and Paccia-Cooper (1980). Child-directed speech is characterized by a remarkable musicality (Papousek and Papousek 1981; Fernald 1989), which is expressed through highly exaggerated prosodic parameters. It is also one of a child’s earliest “musical” experiences, and the prosodic exaggeration that characterizes it may enhance children to identify different units of their mother tongue in conjunction with other cues. Thus, the child-­ directed speech is characterized by a higher pitch (from three to four semitones), a  This should be qualified, however, because while Western societies consider that children must participate in interactions from birth, this is not the case in all cultures. There are indeed some exceptions where parents do not change their way of speaking when addressing their child because they do not consider them as a partner in the interaction before they are able to produce their first words (e.g., the Samoa community in the South West Pacific, the Kalulis in Papua New Guinea, or the Quiché Maya in Guatemala; Ochs and Schieffelin 1982, 1995; Pye 1983). However, among the Kalulis, if there is no simplification of the language strictly speaking, the exchange is more complex than it seems because it is triadic, the mothers passing through a more elderly brother or sister to direct the interaction with their baby. So, there is also a form of guidance where the mother provides a lot of information on the functioning of the interaction both at the discursive and linguistic levels. 3

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great continuity in the evolution of the melody and the use of simple and unidirectional intonational contours. Nine prototypical contours come up regularly with different functions (Papousek 1995): to attract and maintain the attention of the babies or on the contrary to calm them down. The speech flow also adapts to its attentional condition, and there is more regularity and rhythmicity in the productions in child-­ directed speech, as well as more and longer pauses. The segmental level is distorted and the words transformed and replaced by diminutives. Kuhl et al. (1997) showed that the vowels produced by American, Russian, and Swedish mothers speaking to their babies were exaggerated at the articulatory (hyperarticulation) level compared to a condition where they spoke to an adult. These mothers used prosody to draw their babies’ attention to the three cardinal vowels [i], [u], and [a]. In addition, the characteristics of the child-directed speech are not static, and mothers adapt their way of speaking to the age of their child. Thus, they insert more and more isolated words and pauses and interrupt their sentences more often. These characteristics are reinforced until the age of four months (when the mother-infant dyad experiences an intense face-to-face period), and then it attenuates. Later, at 14 months, mothers accentuate the predicate with higher pitch and greater intensity. The keywords are placed in the final position so that they are easier to localize. At the same time, comprehension of words in the mother tongue is increasing rapidly, and the first isolated words appear within mixed babbling. Vowels and consonants are hyper-articulated when the child begins to speak. Parents therefore adapt intuitively to their child’s abilities. Already in their mother’s womb, babies prefer child-directed speech over adult-­ directed speech, and this preference will be maintained until the age of 19 months, when the child’s progression in the mother tongue acquisition seems to depend less on this style of speaking. They prefer child-directed speech all the more as adults use strongly modulated and exaggerated fundamental frequency (Fernald and Kuhl 1981), with rapidly rising contours (Fernald 1989). This children’s preference for child-directed speech (CDS) highlights its potential importance during the language acquisition process. If it helps guide the baby’s attention to relevant aspects of speech, what happens when these prosodic characteristics are altered? When depressive mothers address their children, their speech displays a fundamental frequency that is less modulated than in typical CDS (Kaplan et al. 2001). This loss of prosodic emphasis rendered the depressed CDS less effective in controlled learning tasks (Kaplan et al. 2002). While an impoverished child-directed speech could disturb language acquisition, this does not necessarily mean that children deprived of this type of modality could not acquire their language. Indeed, the essential property of child-directed speech is to exaggerate or modulate characteristics which are already present in the language addressed to the adult. By exaggerating the relevant information in the child-directed speech, adults make more accessible signals that are already present in adult speech. Thus, all languages can be used by children because of their multidimensional structure of the acoustic signal which provides clues about the structural organization of language. The child is therefore placed in a privileged environment where different language modalities converge to facilitate their acquisition. The

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simultaneous use of other modalities including gestures, touch, facial expressions, and eye-to-eye contact allows the child’s attention to be focused on the relevant components of the referential world. For example, according to Falk (2004), mothers use eye-to-eye contact unconsciously to maintain their child’s attention. Therefore, we could ask whether the acquisition process could not be facilitated by mechanisms that would direct infants’ attention to specific aspects of a sentence and its external referent. In this case, controlling attention internally and externally could significantly reduce the referential uncertainty and the need to relate to a pre-­ programmed language and would counter the argument of the poverty of stimulus advanced by Noam Chomsky (1965). This argument assumes that the language input would be so underspecified or so poor in information that it would be very difficult for the child to establish correspondences with the meaning and that in those conditions, the language would be very difficult to acquire. Indeed, speech includes only a limited and finite number of sentences whereas the recursive property of language allows an unbounded generative capacity (Hauser et al. 2002). In addition, spoken language is degraded by interruptions, hesitations, repetitions, and the use of nongrammatical utterances. There is little metalinguistic information available to help a child determine which sentence is grammatical or not. The problem of mapping sentences and their meanings is therefore underdetermined, and learning the language would therefore be impossible. However, language acquisition requires that the child can visualize the input and structural information contained in the speech signal (Chomsky 1965). From this perspective, one might ask what is the structural information and to what extent is the language acquisition environment so impoverished. Indeed, we know today that the speech signal is on the contrary extremely rich and carries important cues on syntactic grouping, for example, that reduces the requirements on the complexity of the underlying innate grammar. In this context, according to the “prosodic bootstrapping” hypothesis (Gleitman et al. 1988; Gleitman and Wanner 1982; Hirsch-Pasek et  al. 1987; Jusczyk et  al. 1992; Morgan 1986; Morgan and Demuth 1996; Morgan et al. 1987; Morgan and Newport 1981; Peters 1983), prosody, which contains many clues about important linguistic boundaries (Morgan et al. 1987), would guide the babies’ attention to the units of the different levels of organization (sentences, clauses, phrases, words), which would allow the children to develop their knowledge on the syntactic organization of their mother tongue. According to this perspective, the acquisition of a small lexicon of concrete nouns, independent of grammatical knowledge (Brent and Siskind 2001; Siskind 1996), can provide a further basis from which syntactic categories and structures could begin to be derived the pairing of actions in situational context (meanings) with syntax (forms), through “semantic bootstrapping” (Gillette et al. 1999; Pinker 1984, 1987, 1994). Subsequently, the growing syntactic knowledge could then be used to make inferences about word meanings via “syntactic bootstrapping” (Gleitman 1990). Furthermore, a large number of theoretical and experimental studies have developed a position where social interaction and learning play a central role in language acquisition (Carpenter and Tomasello 2000; Goldberg 1988; Kuhl 2000; Langacker 1991; Tomasello 1999, 2003). As we have seen above, the child-directed speech

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could in particular guide the attention of the child on the important aspects of the speech signal, thanks to the modulation of the acoustic signal. Joint attention, on the other hand, would allow attention to be focused on the relevant aspects of the referential world, which would reduce the problem of indeterminacy and poverty of stimulus. This mechanism plays an important role in reducing the indeterminacy of the targeted referent or meaning during interactions between the children and their parents. In this context, joint attention refers to babies’ ability to coordinate their attention with a social partner on an object or event (Bruner 1974; Moore and Dunham 1995; Scaife and Bruner 1975; Tomasello 1988). This type of interaction would allow children to identify target referents in the language of the parents, which would facilitate the mapping between the designated object and the word. Joint attention is an integral part of social interactions between human beings. During parent-child interactions, it takes place during routine activities such as bathing, eating, and reading a book which provide additional contextual regularity (Moore and Dunham 1995; Tomasello 1992). It can be solicited by pointing, physical manipulation of the object involved in the interaction and/or focusing the gaze on this object. A crucial aspect of a child’s development is therefore to move from exclusively dyadic interactions (with a person or an object) to triadic exchanges around the first year (Tomasello 1992). The triad is made up of the child and adult placed in a context of joint attention and an object or event that is in the center of their attention. In this context, the ability to follow the direction of one’s interlocutor’s gaze or respond to joint attention is one of the earliest indications of this ability (Scaife and Bruner 1975), but there is a debate on the developmental period at which this capability appears. For Morales et al. (2000b), from six months, infants can respond to joint attention under experimental conditions and a little later, around ten months, in natural condition (in interaction with a familiar adult, with combined use of the vocal level and the gaze). Children from 12 to 18 months of age reliably use referential attentional cues including gaze and postural orientation to evaluate whether an emotional message might be related or not with a salient novel object. They are therefore sensitive to signals about joint attention in their environment, and it is important to determine the functional link between joint attention and language development. Works in this area show a positive correlation between these abilities and later language skills (vocabulary acquisition (Morales et al. 2000a), pointing (Carpenter et al. 1998)). The ability to exploit joint attention cues would therefore be a useful predictor of later language development. Also, when children have difficulty to process joint attention, would that cause learning difficulties? Studies have shown that impairments in joint attention are specific in children with autism (Dawson et al. 2002; Mundy 1995) as early as one year of age (Mundy et al. 1986; Osterling and Dawson 1994), and these deficits are correlated with subsequent language development dysfunctions. Baron-Cohen et al. (1997) reported that children with autism fail to exploit the direction of their interlocutor’s gaze as an index intention to refer, while typically developing 16–19-month-­ old children are sensitive to these signals even if the adult does not address them directly (Baldwin 1991). Children’s understanding of the adult’s intentions would

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therefore reduce the problem of indeterminacy even further (Baldwin et al. 2001), and there would be a continuum in the development of children’s capacity to exploit cues related to joint attention through the ability to infer agent’s sensorimotor intentions. This would lead to the development of a full-blown theory of mind in which the children could attribute intentions, goals, and mental states to their interlocutor (Leslie 1994), which would help reduce the referential indeterminacy over the course of the analysis of a given scene.

1.3 A Scenario to Describe the Processes of Language Acquisition Early in Life The resulting picture of language acquisition might then proceed in the following manner (Dominey and Dodane 2004; Dodane 2018). At or before birth, babies begin by extracting structural regularities from ambient speech, in a largely automatic process that significantly contributes to structural perception of speech and includes segmentation into words. At the same time, categorical differences begin to form, laying the foundation for lexical categorization between content and function words and other finer distinctions. At the same time, child-directed speech helps to highlight the structural regularities described above, initiating a more active, more controlled direction of their attention on important aspects of the speech signal. This controlled treatment is amplified during triadic interactions that are induced by the joint attention shared between the children and their interlocutor. The control induced by the shared attention focuses the attention of the two interlocutors on a common referent and helps to directly address the problem of indeterminacy. In this context of reducing indeterminacy, the relationship between meaning and structural components of the speech signal is possible. Even in the absence of attention directed to the children, children have the ability to follow the attentional cues of adult speaking, providing them with useful referential information that can significantly reduce referential indeterminacy. As the vocabulary develops, the children begin to establish the structural mapping between grammatical constructions and the structural aspects of meaning to which they refer. The interaction between this developing syntactic knowledge and semantic knowledge allows a synergistic bootstrapping that provides the basis for rapid progress, both in lexical and grammatical developments, which allows a reduction in the possible degrees of freedom or referential indeterminacy. A crucial aspect of success in acquiring one’s mother tongue would indeed be the reduction of the multiple degrees of freedom between the language and its referent. A continuum of mechanisms including the acoustic modulations that can be amplified in child-directed speech, the construction of triadic interactions through joint attention, and the synergistic interactions of knowledge on the meaning of words and grammatical constructions seems to contribute to the different stages of reduction of these degrees of freedom.

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In this scenario, it is possible to understand that social interactions play an essential role in the language acquisition process, guiding the child to reduce indeterminacy during the language acquisition process and building up the first stones of intersubjectivity.4

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MUNDY, P.  Joint attention and social-emotional approach behavior in children with autism. Development and Psychopathology, v. 7, n. 1, p.63–82, 1995. MUNDY, P.; SIGMAN, M.; UNGERER, J.; SHERMAN, T. Defining the social deficits of autism: the contribution of nonverbal communication measures. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, v. 27, n. 5, p.657–669, 1986. Ochs, E.; Schieffelin, B. Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories and their implications. Sociolinguistic Working Paper, v. 105, p.1-81, 1982. Ochs, E.; Schieffelin, B. The impact of language socialization on grammatical developement. In: P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (eds.). Handbook of Child language. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. OSTERLING, J.; DAWSON, G.  Early recognition of children with autism: a study of first birthday home video-tapes. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v. 24, n. 3, p.247–257, 1994. PAPOUSEK, M. Le comportement parental intuitif, source cachée de la stimulation musicale dans la petite enfance. In: DELIEGE, I.; SLOBODA, J. (Eds). Naissance et développement du sens musical. Paris: PUF, 1995. p.101–130. PAPOUSEK, M.; PAPOUSEK, H. Musical elements in the infants’ vocalizations: their signifiance for communication, cognition and creativity. In: LIPSITT, L.; ROVEE-COLLIER, C. Advances in infancy research. Norwood: Ablex, 1981. p.163–224. PAPOUSEK, M.; BORNSTEIN, M.  H.; NUZZO, C.; PAPOUSEK, H.; SYMMES, D.  Infant responses to prototypical melodic contours in parental speech. Infant Behavior and Development, v. 13, n. 4, p.539–545, 1990. PETERS, A.  M. The Units of Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. PINKER, S. Language learnability and language development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. PINKER, S. The bootstrapping problem in language acquisition. In: MACWHINNEY, B. (Ed). Mechanisms of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987. PINKER, S. The language instinct. Paris: Odile Jacob, 1994. PYE, C. Mayan telegraphese: intonational determinants of inflectional development invQuiché Mayan. Language, v. 59, n. 3, p.583–604, 1983. SCAIFE, M.; BRUNER, J. S. The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant. Nature, v. 253, n. 5489, p.265–266, 1975. SISKIND, J. M. A computational study of cross-situational techniques for learning word-to-meaning mappings. Cognition, v. 61, p.39–91, 1996. SPENCER, M.  J.; DECASPER, A.  D. Prenatal experience with low-frequency maternal-voice sounds influence neonatal perception of maternal voice samples. Infant Behavior and Development, London, v. 10, n. 2, p.33–142, 1987. TOMASELLO, M. The role of joint attention in early language development. Language Sciences, v. 10, n. 1, p.69–88, 1988. TOMASELLO, M.  The social bases of language acquisition. Social Development, v. 1, n. 1, p.67–87, 1992. TOMASELLO, M.  The item-based nature of children’s early syntactic development. Trends in Cognitive Science, v. 4, n. 4, p.156–163, 1999. TOMASELLO, M. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. VYGOTSKY, L. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962. WERKER, J. F.; TEES, R. C. Phonemic and phonetic factors in adult cross language speech perception. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, v. 75, n. 6, p.1866–1878, 1984. WITKO, A.; GHIMENTON, A.  Des premiers mots à leur utilisation en contexte. In: KERN, S. (Ed). Le développement du langage chez le jeune enfant: Théorie, clinique, pratique. Paris: De Boeck supérieur, 2019.

Chapter 2

Language Perception Development Cristina Name

Abstract  This chapter aims to address the role that discrimination plays in infant language development, considering experimental evidence of infants’ abilities to discriminate acoustic and distributional properties of speech throughout their first year of life. Newborns and infants are able to distinguish phonetic contrasts of all languages, to discriminate speech signals from other nonlinguistic sounds, and to differentiate languages that belong to different rhythmic families. In contact with a language community, their discrimination capacities decline, and infants show a perceptual narrowing, becoming specialized to detect segmental, suprasegmental, and distributional properties of the language they are learning. Speech perception plays an important role in language acquisition, as acoustical and distributional characteristics perceived by infants allow them to discover the language properties (grammatical structure and lexicon). Also, it has an impact on later language development and children’s social interactions with native and nonnative language speakers. Keywords  Perceptual language development · Early discriminatory abilities · Language acquisition

2.1 Introduction There are over 6,000 languages1 spoken worldwide that vary in phonology, morphology, and syntax. Yet, children quickly and effortlessly learn one or more languages, depending on the monolingual or bilingual context in which they grow.

 According to Ethnologue (https://www.ethnologue.com), there are around 7,000 living languages, of which around 2% are sign languages and 42% are endangered languages. In this chapter, we will deal with perceptual skills involved in oral spoken language acquisition. 1

C. Name (*) Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), NEALP/UFJF, CNPq, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_2

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Studies on different languages show that speech signal has phonological and distributional cues that may be used by infants to assess the syntax and the lexicon of their language. This idea is explored by the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis (Gleitman and Wanner 1982; Morgan and Demuth 1996; Christophe et  al. 1997, 2008) according to which infants’ sensitivity to these properties of the input bootstraps language acquisition. In this chapter, we will focus on perceptual skills that allow infants to discriminate subtle acoustic and distributional characteristics in speech. As we will see, newborns are able to distinguish phonetic contrasts of all languages, to discriminate speech signals from other nonlinguistic sounds, and to differentiate languages that belong to different rhythmic families. As they are exposed to one or more languages, these discrimination capacities decline, and infants show a perceptual narrowing, becoming specialized to detect segmental, suprasegmental, and distributional properties, and ignoring those features that have no value in the languages they are learning. Such perceptual specialization helps infants to start building their lexicon and syntax knowledge even before consistent semantic information is available to them. Also, it will play an important role in later language development and social, interactional use.

2.2 Early Perceptual Abilities Infants are exposed to language as soon as they are born and even before. Fetal auditory system is working by the end of pregnancy (Lecanuet et al. 1993; Kisilevsky et al. 2000), and some aspects of the mother’s voice and speech pass through the tissue and fluid of the womb (Querleu et  al. 1988). Third-trimester fetuses (31–40 weeks) are able to recognize the mother’s voice (De Casper and Fifer 1980; Kisilevsky et al. 2009) and to discriminate the mother tongue from a foreign one based on its intonational contour (Kisilevsky et al. 2009). Neonates show sensitivity to prosodic characteristics. For example, 1–4-day-old newborns preferred to listen to speech stimuli compared to complex nonspeech stimuli (sine wave analogs of speech, which retained main properties of their speech counterparts, such as duration, pitch contour, and amplitude envelope) (Vouloumanos and Werker 2007). Moreover, newborns’ crying melody is influenced by the intonational pattern of their native language (i.e., their mother’s tongue). Researchers have observed that French newborns more often produced cries with a rising intonation contour whereas German newborns produced falling contours when crying, according to, respectively, French and German intonation patterns (Mampe et al. 2009). These results suggest that, beyond capturing the prosodic information of their mother’s utterances, fetuses can memorize them for a certain period. There is some evidence that newborns are also sensitive to specific prosodic features. For example, two-day-old French newborns discriminate unknown, Japanese words differing in pitch contour (Nazzi et al. 1998b), and 1–4-day-old newborns perceive global rhythmic properties, distinguishing languages that belong to distinct

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rhythmic families (e.g., English from Italian) as opposed to languages from the same rhythmic family (e.g., English and Dutch) (Nazzi et  al. 1998a). Such early language processing capacities do not seem to depend on large, systematic exposure to language and would result from perceptual mechanisms, some of them not unique to humans (Kuhl 2004; Gervain and Mehler 2010). But early exposure to one or more languages promotes a fine-tuned perceptual development necessary to language learning (Kuhl et al. 1992).

2.3 Becoming a Learner of a Specific Language During the first six months of age, infants distinguish phonetic contrasts of all human languages, discriminating sounds from different categories, an ability known as categorical perception (Eimas et al. 1971; Werker and Lalonde 1988). After this, there is a developmental change, and infants’ discrimination declines to vowels that do not belong to their language phonemic repertoire by six months of age and to consonants by ten months (Werker and Tees 1984; Kuhl 1991; Rivera-Gaxiola et al. 2005). At the same time, infants begin to learn phonotactics of the language, that is, the rules of sound combinations within and between words. By the age of nine months, Dutch-learning infants distinguish syllables created according to Dutch phonotactic rules from syllables that do not respect its rules (Friederici and Wessels 1993). At the same age, English-learning infants discriminate between frequent and infrequent combinatorial phonetic patterns of English words (Jusczyk et al. 1994). Words, phrases, and sentences present distributional regularities (Brent and Cartwright 1996) used by infants to discover language properties such as phonotactic rules. Transitional probability is another cue used by infants. It refers to the probability of one unit occurring after another one. Let us take a classical example, the English phrase “pretty baby” (Saffran et al. 1996; Saffran et al. 1997): “pre” is followed by “ty” frequently, as “ba” is followed by “by,” but the sequence “ty-ba” is less frequent. In this phrase, the transitional probabilities are 1.0 between syllables within words and 0.5 between syllables at the word edges. Researchers have explored infants’ sensitivity to transitional probabilities using artificial languages and demonstrated that eight-month-old infants segment words from fluent speech based on such cues (Saffran et al. 1996) and use high-probability sequences in initial word-object mapping (Erickson et al. 2014). The recognition of function words and their place in sentences is also related to phonological and distributional properties of speech. Function words belong to closed classes (articles, prepositions, etc.), are very frequent in the speech, and appear at the edges of prosodic phrases. In several languages, they are phonologically weak, monosyllabic, and unstressed (Cutler 1993; Shi et al. 1998), while content words are stressed and show a variable number of syllables. Newborns discriminate between function words and content words based on their acoustical features (Shi et  al. 1999). By the age of eight months, infants recognize high-­ frequent function words (Shi et  al. 2006a, b, c) and are able to find them in

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continuous speech (Höhle and Weissenborn 2003; Shi et  al. 2006a). Around 11-month-olds, infants seem to identify and represent different function words, being sensitive to minimal segmental changes in their shape (Shady 1996; Shafer et al. 1998; Shi et al. 2006c). At the beginning of the second year of life, babies distinguish real determiners (articles and possessives) from slightly phonetically modified pseudo-determiners. They also use determiners to segment determiner phrases, that is, noun phrases preceded by a determiner, for example, the/a/my house (Höhle and Weissenborn 2000, 2003; Shi et al. 2003, 2006a, b, c; Hallé et al. 2008; Shi and Lepage 2008; Name et al. 2015). Concerning suprasegmental properties, speech signal consists of prosodic constituents organized in levels from the syllable to the intonational utterance level (Nespor and Vogel 2007). Although there is not a perfect correspondence between prosodic and other linguistic levels (lexicon and syntax), the identification of prosodic constituent boundaries may facilitate infants’ speech segmentation in smaller units in order to learn the language vocabulary and syntax. As previously mentioned, newborns are sensitive to intonation contours and rhythmic properties of languages. Also, there is evidence that they perceive acoustic correlates of phonological phrase boundaries which correspond to a syntactic boundary (Christophe et  al. 1994; Christophe et  al. 2001). Using the nonnutritive sucking procedure, researchers presented three-day-old infants to lists of bisyllabic items extracted from words at the edge of phonological phrases (e.g., maty, extracted from panorama # typique) and similar bisyllabic items extracted from internal words, with no boundary between syllables (e.g., mati, extracted from matématicien). The results indicate that newborns discriminated between the two types of stimuli, suggesting that they were sensitive to the acoustic correlate (preboundary consonant lengthening) of phonological phrase boundary. Infants within their second semester of life become sensitive to boundaries of smaller and smaller prosodic units. Between 7 and 11 months, they are able to detect clause (Hirsh-Pasek et  al. 1987; Kemler-­ Nelson et  al. 1995), phrase (Jusczyk et  al. 1992; Gerken et  al. 1994), and word boundaries (Myers et al. 1996). Throughout the first year of life, infants’ speech perception changes, and especially between 6 and 12 months, there is a perceptual narrowing as they are more and more exposed to language (Kuhl et  al. 2005; Werker and Hensch 2015) and participate in verbal interactions with adults and older children. In this sense, infant-­ directed speech (IDS) plays an important role in this process since this register, compared to adult-directed speech (ADS), displays higher pitch, greater pitch variations, longer pauses between utterances, slower speed, vowel and syllable stretching, and hyper-articulation, among other characteristics (Snow 1977, 1995; Garnica 1977; Fernald 1992; also see Dodane, in this volume). Newborns and infants prefer to listen to IDS than to ADS (Cooper and Aslin 1990; De Pablo et al. 2020). These more salient acoustic characteristics may facilitate speech processing by infants, allowing them to identify abstract properties of the language they are learning, such as word order and agreement rules, and to build an initial lexicon. For example, seven-month-old infants distinguished words in fluent speech more easily when sentences were produced in IDS (with exaggerated intonation contour) compared to

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sentences produced in ADS (Thiessen et  al. 2005). Also, 5–6-month-old and 8–9-month-old European Portuguese infants discriminate yes-no questions from declaratives based on their distinct pitch contour, overemphasized in IDS register (Frota et al. 2014). This is what prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis proposes (Gleitman and Wanner 1982; Morgan and Demuth 1996; Christophe et al. 1997, 2008). According to this view, language acquisition may be bootstrapped by prosodic and distributional cues presented in input. In this sense, infants may start building their lexicon and syntax knowledge even before consistent semantic information is available to them. There is an amount of evidence indicating that infants identify words and morphosyntactic structures using these cues. For example, between 6 and 14 months, infants use prosodic cues to parse syntactic structures (Soderstrom et  al. 2003; Nazzi et  al. 2000; Costa 2015) and to find words in fluent speech (Gout et al. 2004; Silva and Name 2014); yet, babies use a different kind of function words (articles and pronouns) to identify the syntactic category of the adjacent content word (noun or verb) (Höhle et  al. 2004; Shi and Melançon 2010; Teixeira and Name 2014; Name et al. 2015). It is worth remembering that language is multimodal and speech discrimination is also facilitated by other sources of information. Early speech perception is improved when the infant sees people talking. Around the age of four months, infants are able to match phonetic information in lips and voice (Patterson and Werker 1999) and discriminate their native language from an unfamiliar one based on facial speech information only (Weikum et al. 2007). Moreover, infants’ oral-­ motor movements influence speech perception (Yeung and Werker 2013).

2.4 Impacts of Speech Perception on Later Language Development and Use As we can see, speech perception plays an important role in language acquisition, as acoustical and distributional speech characteristics are perceived by infants and allow them to discover the language properties (grammatical structure and lexicon). Research has tried to better understand the relationship between speech perception and later language development. Tsao, Liu, and Kuhl (2004) observed that infants’ performance on native language phonetic contrast at six months predicts word understanding, word production, and sentence comprehension at 13, 16, and 20 months of age. In another study, Kuhl et al. (2005) verified that better native language phonetic discrimination at seven-and-a-half months is positively correlated with word production at eighteen months, and with sentence complexity and sentence length on production at twenty-four months. In contrast, a negative correlation was observed between better nonnative-language phonetic discrimination and the performance in word production, sentence complexity, and sentence length on

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production at the same ages. These results suggest a strong impact of early specialized perception abilities on later language development. Regarding the interactional dimension of language development, experimental evidence indicates that infants as young as six months show social preferences based on their language (phonetic, prosodic) knowledge. For example, Kinzler, Dupoux, and Spelke (2007) tested six-month-old infants from monolingual American English families using the looking-time procedure. In the familiarization phase, infants watched alternating videos of two American English-Spanish bilingual women. One woman spoke in Spanish to half of infants (group A) and in American English to the remaining infants (group B). The other woman spoke in American English to group A and in Spanish to group B. After this, the pictures of the two women smiling were presented side by side, and looking times for each picture were recorded. Infants looked longer to the woman who previously spoke in American English, their native language. In a similar experiment, ten-month-old monolingual infants from American English speaking and French speaking families were tested. Both groups of infants watched alternating videos of monolingual adults speaking to them in American English or French. In the test phase, adults offered in silence a toy to the infants. Infants accepted the toy given by their native language speaker more often than the same toy given by the foreign language speaker (Kinzler et  al. 2007). Taken together, these results suggest sensitivity to native-nonnative language contrast influencing infant’s choices in early social engagements.

2.5 Concluding Remarks Infants are born with perceptual skills that allow them to discriminate sound properties of all languages. Such abilities do not seem to depend on systematic exposure to language and would result from perceptual mechanisms, some of them shared with other animals. Throughout the first year of life, as infants are more and more involved in speech interactions, their perceptual system becomes specialized to detect acoustic and distributional properties from speech input, which may be used by infants as cues to bootstrap the language learning. Empirical evidence indicates that early speech perception allows infants to build initial vocabulary and syntactic knowledge. It has also an impact on later language development and infants’ social interactions with interlocutors of different languages (native, nonnative language speakers). Although neurobiological and social aspects of language learning were not the focus of this chapter, it is worth noting that they are also involved in perceptual language development, as biological maturation, as well as social constraints, and play a role in the pathway of perceptual ability development (Kuhl 2004; Kuhl and Rivera-Gaxiola 2008).

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NAZZI, T.; BERTONCINI, J.; MEHLER, J.  Language discrimination by newborns: Toward an understanding of the role of rhythm. Journal of Experimental Psychology, v. 24, n. 3, p.756-766, 1998a. NAZZI, T.; FOCCIA, C.; BERTONCINI, J. Discrimination of pitch contours by neonates. Infant Behavior and Development, v. 21, n. 4, p.779-784, 1998b. NAZZI, T.; KEMLER-NELSON, D.; JUSCZYK, P. W.; JUSCZYK, A. M. Six-month-old’ detection of clauses embedded in continuous speech: effects of prosody well-formedness. Infancy, v. 1, p.123 – 147, 2000. NESPOR, M.; VOGEL, I.  Prosodic domains of external sandhi rules. In: HUST, H.; SMITH, N. (Eds.) The structure of phonological representations 1, Dodrecht-Holland: Foris Publications, 1982. [Rev. Ed. 2007]. PATTERSON, M. L.; WERKER, J. F. Matching phonetic information in lips and voice is robust in 4.5-month-old infants. Infant Behaviour & Development, v. 22, p.237-247, 1999. QUERLEU, D.; RENARD, X.; VERSYP, F.; PARIS-DELRUE, L.; CREPIN, G.  Fetal hearing. European Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, v. 28, p.191–212, 1988. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-­2243(88)90030-­5 RIVERA-GAXIOLA M; SILVA-PEREYRA J; KUHL P. K. Brain potentials to native and non-­ native speech contrasts in 7- and 11-month-old American infants. Dev. Sci., v. 8, p.162–72, 2005. SAFFRAN, J.; ASLIN, R.; NEWPORT, E. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, v. 274, p.1926–1928, 1996. SAFFRAN, J.; NEWPORT, E.; ASLIN, R.; TUNICK, R.; BARRUEDO, S. Incidental language learning: Listening (and learning) out of the corner of your ear. Psychological Science, v. 8, n. 2, p.101-105, 1997. SHADY, M. Infants’ sensitivity to function morphemes. PhD Dissertation – Univ. Buffalo, 1996. SHAFER, V.; SHUCARD, D.; SHUCARD, J.; GERKEN, L. A. An Electrophysiological Study of Infants’ Sensitivity to the Sound Patterns of English Speech. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, v. 41, p.87 -886, 1998. SHI, R.; LEPAGE, M.  The effect of functional morphemes on word segmentation in preverbal infants. Developmental Science, v. 11, n. 3, p.407-413, 2008. SHI, R.; MELANÇON, A. Syntactic Categorization in French-Learning Infants. Infancy, v. 15, n. 5, p.1-15, 2010. SHI, R.; MARQUIS, A.; GAUTHIER, B. Segmentation and representation of function words in preverbal French-learning infants. In: BAMMAN, D.; MAGNITSKAIA, T.; ZALLER, C. (Eds.). Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (vol. 2). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 2006a, p.549-560. SHI, R.; MORGAN J. L.; ALLOPENNA. Phonological and acoustic bases for earliest grammatical category assignment: a cross-linguistic perspective. Journal of Child Language, v. 25, p.169-201, 1998. SHI, R.; CUTLER, A.; WERKER, J.; CRUICKSHANK, M. Frequency and form as determinants of functor sensitivity in English-acquiring infants. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., v. 119, EL61-EL66, 2006b. SHI, R.; WERKER, J.; CUTLER, A.  Function words in early speech perception. 15th ICPhS Barcelona, p.3009-3012, 2003. SHI, R.; WERKER, J.; CUTLER, A. Recognition and representation of function words in English-­ learning infants. Infancy, v. 10, p.187-198, 2006c. SHI, R.; WERKER, J.; MORGAN, J. Newborn infants' sensitivity to perceptual cues to lexical and grammatical words. Cognition, v. 72, n. 2, p.11-21, 1999. SILVA, Í.; NAME, C.  A sensibilidade de bebês brasileiros a pistas prosódicas de fronteiras de sintagma entoacional na fala dirigida à criança. Letrônica, v. 7, n. 1, p.4-25, 2014. SNOW, E. C. Mothers’ speech research: from input to interaction. In: SNOW, C. E; FERGUSON, C.  A. (Eds). Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. p.31-49.

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SNOW, E. C. Issues in the study of input: Finetuning, universality, individual and developmental differences, and necessary causes. In: FLETCHER, P.; MACWHINNEY, B. (Eds.) The Handbook of Child Language. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995. p.180-193. SODERSTROM, M.; SEIDL, A.; NELSON, K. G. D.; JUSCZYK, W. P. The Prosodic Bootstrapping of phrases: Evidence from prelinguistic infants. Journal of Memory and Language. Estados Unidos, v. 49, p. 249-267, 2003. TEIXEIRA, S. A.; NAME, C. A identificação das categorias lexicais V(erbo) e N(ome) a partir de categorias funcionais. Revista da ANPOLL (Online), v. 37, p. 273-292, 2014. THIESSEN, E.; HILL, E.; SAFFRAN, J. Infant-Directed Speech facilitates word segmentation. Infancy, v.7, n.1, p.53-71, 2005. TSAO, F. M.; LIU, H. M.; KUHL, P. K. Speech perception in infancy predicts language development in the second year of life: a longitudinal study. Child Development, v. 75, p.1067–1084, 2004. VOULOUMANOS, A.; WERKER, J. Listening to language at birth: evidence for a bias for speech in neonates. Developmental Science, v. 10, n. 2, p.159-171, 2007. WEIKUM, W. M.; VOULOUMANOS, A.; NAVARRA, J.; SOTO-FARACO, S.; SEBASTIÁN-­ GALLÉS, N.; WERKER, J. F. Visual language discrimination in infancy. Science, v. 316, n. 5828, p.1159, 2007. WERKER, J.  F.; HENSCH, T.  K. Critical periods in speech perception: new directions. Annual Review of Psychology, v. 66, p.173-196, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/ annurev-­psych-­010814-­015104 Werker, J.; Lalonde, C. Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and developmental change. Developmental Psychology, v. 24, p.672–683, 1988. WERKER, J.; TESS, R. Phonemic and phonetic factors in adult cross-language speech perception. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., v. 75, p.1866-1878, 1984. YEUNG, H.  H.; WERKER, J.  F. Lip movements affect infant audiovisual speech perception. Psychological Science, v. 24, n. 5, 603–612, 2013.

Chapter 3

Language, Subjectivity and Alterity: Humour in Children’s Discourse Alessandra Del Ré

and Marina Célia Mendonça

Abstract  This text intends to present some considerations about language and discrimination, using the children’s humouristic language to discuss it. Our starting point is the following question: what is the role of the other (alterity) in the constitution of subjectivity, in and through language? We discuss this issue as we consider a specific phenomenon: children’s humour. The results of the analysis of the scenes of interaction between parents and child reveal the importance of the other in the constitution of this subject’s subjectivity in and through language. It is in the family (microculture) that what the child does and says is interpreted by others, and even if they do not understand exactly what the child really means (we will never know for sure), it is not important. The essential thing is to give meaning to what the child says, to be a language partner, to be the “broad vision” and then to help the child to constitute his/her own subjectivity. In the case of humour, the role of this other is also essential because it is the other who will guide the child in what he/she should understand as humour and what people laugh at in that family: it is through the bond that is created between the self and the other that humour exists. Finally, we understand that it is necessary to consider that if we understand the importance of the other in the constitution of the self – whoever this other may be and whatever they may bring to the self – how can we ever get to the point in which discrimination occurs? If we consider the role of the interaction with this other in order to become who we are, how can we ever value or undervalue them?

This work is the result of reflections undertaken during the events “From Discriminating to Discrimination  – The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity” at BTU, Cottbus, Germany, on 09/23/2020, and the work “Humour, discours et acquisition du langage”, presented at the Séminaire PRAXILING, at Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3, on 12/09/2020. Both are part of the activities of the International Research Network “Language in childhood and subjectivity: speech and writing in the context of acquisition and teaching/learning”, linked to the Capes-­ PrInt Project of Unesp “Languages and knowledge production” (Theme 1: Societies Plurals). A. Del Ré (*) · M. C. Mendonça São Paulo State University (UNESP), São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_3

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Keywords  Humour · The other and the self · Language acquisition

3.1 Introduction The theme of the book which guides all the chapters is very challenging because it makes us face a reality which is, unfortunately, very far from being overcome and solved: the question of discrimination. And all the studies presented in this book show different ways of talking about it. The way we will approach it in this text, one single point of view, from humour in children’s discourse, makes us think about the responsibility we have as parents, teachers, citizens, etc. to contribute to banish discrimination and fight against it. It is important to mention that this text is a result of a collaborative work, with financial support from CNPq and CAPES (PRINT Program), the last one, in the project “Language in childhood and subjectivity: speech and writing in acquisition and learning/teaching context”. It is also a result from discussions that have been taking place in the group GEALin-UNESP, counting with the researchers Dr. Rosângela Hilário, Dr. Alessandra Vieira, Dr. Paula Bullio and also Dr. Patrícia Falasca, among other researchers, with the professor Dr. Luciane de Paula from PPGLLP-UNESP, Brazil, and the professors Dr. Christelle Dodane, Dr. Aliyah Morgenstern, Dr. Marie Leroy-Collombel and Dr. Anne Salazar-Orvig, from France. Some of them are also participating in this book. The topic of this discussion proposes a twofold understanding of discrimination, one that is related to language and the other that is related to social questions, and we intend to bring the considerations related to language by using the children’s language, and in the end, we will bring some considerations which can contribute to consider a kind of effect it may have on the social issue or a way to observe this social issue. The main thread that links these thoughts together is the role of the other, the alterity and the constitution of subjectivity in and through language. In Christelle Dodane’s and Cristina Name’s chapters in this book, we can see two movements in the beginning of the language acquisition process, with the acquisition of phonemes, with the discrimination of sounds: a movement that goes through a perception of work the child does, which brings a biological aspect of this process, as it depends on an ear that does it and a brain which processes this information, but it also brings the importance of the social, and the other who addresses the child (child-directed speech) and slowly guides his/her “ear” to make the child pay attention to the sounds of their language and set aside the other sounds. And it is in this second aspect that we will focus on this work. We could ask: What is the role of the other (alterity) in the constitution of subjectivity, in and through language? We could answer this question from many points of views, but we will focus on a specific phenomenon: children’s humour. To help us develop these ideas, we will bring Bakhtin’s and the Circle’s works (Bakhtin 2011, 1997; Volóchinov 2017, 2019) but also other author’s research who

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can dialogue with this approach that we call dialogic-discursive, such as Vygotsky (2001) and Bruner (1984). This is a theoretical dialogue that the dearest professor Frédéric François (1994) brought to the studies in language acquisition, with professor Dr. Anne Salazar-Orvig, from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. Therefore, the work from our groups, GEALin, GED and Slovo (Del Ré et al. 2014a, b, 2021; Del Ré and Orvig 2021), follows this dialogue. Having said that, some concepts will be mentioned with the aim to help us understand children’s language and specially the topic of humour: the notions of language, interaction, alterity, discursive movements, subjectivity and singularity. Language, for the circle of Bakhtin, is a “living organism”, and enunciation is part of the dialogue, seen as an uninterrupted communication process, since every utterance is an answer to another utterance. In the glossary that follows the translation into Portuguese of Marxism and Philosophy of Language (Volóchinov 2017, p.357–358), which was made directly from Russian, utterance is defined as “a link in the chain of discursive communication” and “always responds to something and moves towards an answer”. Thus, the concept, for the author, is directly related to dialogue, responsiveness. In Volóchinov’s (2019) perspective, moreover, verbal language is in an indissoluble relationship with other languages (e.g. gestures) and with the situation, which involves the immediate interaction between the interlocutors and the space-time of this interaction but also the broader interaction with the cultural and ideological context. The author argues that the word forms together with the extraverbal situation and “indissoluble whole of meaning” (Mendonça 2012, 2020; Mendonça and Lara 2017). In another publication (Volóchinov 2017), the author argues that the “complete” meaning of the utterance must be observed in the discursive event, when language is given a new context, which the author understands as a new theme, which, in this way, is unique, is unrepeatable and is marked by the concrete situation/interaction in which it was constituted. Thus, language is not out of the subject or in the individual’s mind, but it is in the social, historical and ideological relations. Because of that, the other is a fundamental part in this “game”. Otherness has also been identified as one of the pillars of the work of authors of the circle of Bakhtin (Ponzio 2008; Amorim 2001). In Bakhtin’s (1997) original approach to literary narrative, different aspects of the relationship between the voice of the self and the other appear. These aspects have been the object of study in recent discursive research and have gained a broader dimension, especially in the Brazilian context (Geraldi 2010). We consider these studies on subjectivity and otherness in the research on language acquisition that we develop. For this reason, we understand that during the language acquisition process, this relation between the child and the other is fundamental. The other can therefore be the father, the mother, the babysitter, the grandparents, the caretakers, etc. By the way, this relationship starts even before the child is born. In the mother’s womb, around the fourth month of pregnancy, the child (see also Dodane, Chap. 1, this book) already has a functional ear and is confronted with language, being totally sensitive to the sounds produced outside the womb (speech, music, voice, etc.). They have a preference for the mother’s voice due to a particular prosody. And, after

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birth, the child’s desire to say something is interpreted by the other, and it can be verified, for example, in the dialogues when the adult speaks with a child who verbalizes very few words or does not verbalize yet, or who only points to an object, and the mother (or the adult) says: “Do you want this? I’ll give it to you”. During the child’s development process, the adult addresses his/her in different ways, asking for his/her participation, and even without verbalizing it, the child is able to communicate through multimodality, which is considered to be language, with vocalizations, gestures (to point, to say no by pushing something away with their hands, to shake the head no), crying, looking, etc. So, we can observe regularities in the process of language acquisition such as the age to produce the first words, in general, the first word combinations, but more than these regularities, there are some very particular ways to do it. Each child does it in a singular way, in and through language, building up her/his subjectivity. Observing a set of works from the circle, we can assume that subjectivity is constituted by and through language, by the first language(s), by what is assimilated from the communication flow, by the interaction with the other and by the interaction with other discourses. Subjectivity can only happen in the singularity of the act, but the traces of this subjectivity are left by the person in their discourse. But it does not reveal everything that constitutes them as a person, once this individual will never be completely “finished”: it is in the interaction with the other people, may they be present or not, that this subjectivity will be constructed and modified, in a movement of mutual constitution between the self and the other: Let us say then that each “singular act” – each manifestation in the form of language, of dialogue, of discourse – is marked by the speaker’s subjectivity, revealing a subject who enunciates himself/herself, who manifests himself/herself, who takes a stand when confronted to other discourses. The manifestation of subjectivity happens, then, in the singularity of the act. Nevertheless, the traces left by the speaker in his/her discourse do not reveal all that constitutes him/her as a subject – they could not do it, due to the fact that the utterance is inserted in a determined time and space, as an answer to another utterance. However, subjectivity is not accessible unless it is materialized in language, a signic production, and, therefore, also ideological. And, yet, this materialization does not allow the expression, or the understanding of this subject as a whole. This is so because he/she cannot be understood as a finished “whole”, as in the moment that he/she produces language, by interacting with other subjects who are immediately present or not, his/her subjectivity is, once more, being constituted – or, in other words, there is a mutual constitution movement between the self and the other. Thus, this constitutive subjectivity of the subject is, by excellence, social, and is built socially, in the relationships with the other. (Del Ré et al. 2012, p. 63–64)

In this perspective and observing the child’s discourse, we can consider that the other’s discourse serves as a model for the child to elaborate their own discourse, which makes their productions anchored in an intersubjective space shared in the dialogue (Salazar Orvig 2010). Consequently, we analyse the child’s speech from the discursive movements that appear in the interaction with the child and his/her interlocutor (self and the other), considering the discursive and situational contexts, the dialogy (constitutive of every discourse), the relation of interaction among subjects, the constitution of the subject in the discourse and the role they assume during communication.

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The other, for us, can be understood as the other subject (the father, the mother, the brother or the sister, the interviewer, the other parents, someone else to which the child addresses the enunciation, etc.), that is, the interlocutor direct or not direct with whom the child interacts. It is only in the other that we may find the “broaden view”, the perception that the self does not exist without the other. According to this idea, the interaction has a fundamental role in the process of language acquisition as it organizes this relation between self and other. And when we look at some language phenomena, all these theoretical questions raised so far become more evident. Humour is one of these phenomena. Although humour is a topic which has been often studied by linguistics, it is, in general, conceived from the adult’s point of view. And anyone who studies the child’s language knows that it is not possible to look at language phenomena from this perspective. Therefore, a definition that could be suitable for the adult’s humour will not necessarily express the process which involves its acquisition. For this reason, defining humour in the child’s language is a challenge, especially because from the linguistics’ point of view, mainly in Brazil, there are very few studies on that topic. The ones that we can find usually come from psychology or from psychoanalysis frameworks. We are still trying to find a definition to the term, to unravel how this humour is constituted (Del Ré et al. 2019, 2020). But we can say that it is a shared trace in different situations of language use, it crosses the speech genres (Mendonça and Lara 2017; Lara and Mendonça 2020) and it moves in different fields, despite being more present in certain genres and often in its own field – according to Possenti (2018), humour is a field. The author considers the studies by Bourdieu on the subject, for whom the main feature of the field is that its subjects follow specific rules, which include types of practices and types of texts/genres, for example. Thus, Possenti highlights that the field of humour institutes forms of “professionalization” for humourists, specific discursive genres (such as cartoon, comics, joke and caricature) and specific forms of organization and distribution, according to practices such as fairs, competitions, publications, etc. How can this author’s study contribute to our research on humour in the language acquisition process? Specifically in the writing acquisition process, we can say that humour and the discursive genres of the field are extensively explored in (didactic) instruments in children’s literacy activities  – children’s literature, songs, comics, etc. It is not our interest to go deeper into this aspect in this text, but it seems necessary to highlight that the child is constantly in contact with oral, written and multimodal language practices that involve humour, whether in the cultural activities to which he/she is exposed (films, plays, storytelling, etc.) or in everyday interactions with his/her close interlocutors. Whether he/she understands humour in these productions, how he/she understands it and how this issue is related to the process of learning to use discursive genres are themes for future research. In order to understand this humour on language acquisition, in collaboration with the groups COLAJE and PRAXILING, we have studied the data of two Brazilian children and two French children – this data was registered on a monthly basis, for one hour and in everyday situations. In this chapter, we will only bring data from G. in two scenes. And it is according to various works and discussions that we were able to reach a “list” of ingredients that are necessary in order to have shared humour:

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A. Del Ré and M. C. Mendonça In line with those findings, in our previous longitudinal analyses (Del Ré 2011; Del Ré; Morgenstern 2010; Del Ré et al. 2015) we showed that specific social-cognitive co-present parameters are mandatory for the comprehension and production of humour in young children: a) incongruity; b) distancing; c) shared knowledge; and d) intentionality. The sequences involving intentional humour are identified thanks to different cues coded in the children’s productions, such as smiles, laughter, or eye gaze. Hoicka and Akhtar (2012) have also interpreted those cues as indirectly indicating intentionality. Norrick (2006) also insists on the fact that humour is triggered by the awareness of some incongruity – a discrepancy between our representation of an event and reality. When we find something incongruous, it leads to a break in the unfurling of a script (Kintsch and Van Dijk 1978), it creates a sudden semantic leap between two entirely different mental spaces (Coulson 2000) or some violation of conversational roles as defined for example by Levinson (1992) or Clark (1996). The discrepancy between the expectations of the interlocutors and the content expressed dialogically can provoke an emotional discharge. If the reaction to the incongruity is oriented positively, often through the current or previous scaffolding of adults, it is shared through smiling and laughter (Dodane et  al. 2014). Once children become aware of this discrepancy, they can intentionally amuse the interlocutor and/or themselves. Shared knowledge between the interlocutor and the speaker is necessary in order for the child to observe and understand incongruity. (Del Ré et al. 2020, p. 115)

In addition to this study, it is important to point out that shared humour cannot be thought of only from the point of view of the one who produces it. What makes humour to be considered as so is its potential. The potential is what is in the social and cultural stability: it does not go through the meaning of the word, but how the utterances are organized, a stability that receives different outlines depending on the other and the situation of the interaction. Volóchinov (2017), when discussing the meaning of the concrete utterance, draws attention to what is stable in this sense and what is historically constructed in society and allows social coexistence based on the consensus of meaning (we can consider, in this regard, the meaning that is on the dictionary, institutionalized in social life). The author calls this stable sense signification and points out that it tends towards “repetition”. On the other hand – as we have already highlighted in this text – considering that the interaction introduces the utterance in a new time/ space (and in a new game played by different interlocutors), the stable meaning finds a new theme, which in turn guarantees the unique character of each interactive event and the uniqueness of the meaning of the utterance. The author calls signification this stable sense, which is the basis for the production of the new, singular, in a new context. It is from this perspective that we understand the production of meaning in the interaction between the child and his/her interlocutor and also how we consider the humour events in this interaction.

3.2 Some Humour Scenes In order to look at this humour, we will analyse the data from G. (NALingua’s data, Del Ré et al. 2016), who is a Brazilian monolingual child, recorded monthly – usually for about an hour, in everyday situations, such as meals, playing moments, bath, etc., from his birth up to his seventh year of age.

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The data was transcribed following the CHAT rules from the programme CLAN, available at CHILDES website (https://talkbank.org/manuals/CHAT.pdf). In order to illustrate what we have discussed so far, we will bring a scene in which G. is five-month-and-a-half old. It is the first time he is going to eat food, a banana, and the child seems to internalize progressively the amusement introduced by the adult. At first, the banana seems to be something very weird for him. He spits it and after doing it sometimes, his mother finds it funny and laughs. In a second moment, he spits and the mother starts laughing. At this time, he laughs at her as if he was answering her. He is sharing the smile, but he does not seem to understand what is happening, the reason why she is laughing. In a third moment, after some spoonful of the fruit, the mother starts talking to the father who is filming and she says: “I think he doesn’t like the banana’s consistency”. At this moment, G. looks at the mother and smiles. The most interesting thing is that she interprets his smile as an answer such as “no, mommy, I do like it”. Therefore, we could consider that there was a shared smile, there is something unexpected, incongruous to the child (the banana), but for the mother, the incongruous is probably the fact that he rejects this banana. It seems we are facing a kind of complicity, even though it is not totally clear that what is shared is the same for both. They are sharing some kind of amusement, although G. maybe does not know exactly what this amusement is. So, the other has the fundamental role of saying what that family is laughing about. We can see that the mother interprets the whole time, and this interpretation is fundamental for the child’s language acquisition process and, especially, to the construction of humour, which has been outlined as something that seems to be a shared amusement and which serves as the basis for future humorous productions of the child. This is part of a situation (everyday speech genre (Bakhtin 2011)) that is probably going to be repeated (formats (Bruner 1984)) again and again, which will allow the child, through these routines and events of interaction, to enter language. Assuming the child enters the world of language by the speech genre means that he/she acquires utterances that are part of a “scenery”: the one of the family conversations, of the birthday parties, of the beach, of the meal times, etc. That means that there is a whole linguistic-discursive universe that follows these situations and that will allow the child to constitute himself/herself as subject, to constitute his/her subjectivity and/or his/her identity in and through language. In order to illustrate these theoretical notions, we will analyse another scene, where G. is three years and six months old. In this scene, we have a funny moment between father and son, at home, during a game with little toy cars. It is a race game that the father often organizes in the living room corridor. For this, they make a selection of cars that will participate and the others that will be kept in the box. G. does not want to keep the cars in the box, and observing that the father is a bit nervous, since he wants the toys to be organized, the boy uses a sentence that is recurrent for them to escape the situation:

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Father: and the other two who are going to run. Father: Now, you can put everything in the box, go! G. what, what, what, what, what, boy! G. see if you have a cart here! of racing! Father: (laughter). there is none! (father smiles), G. is good!1 The catchphrase “What, what, what, boy” was created by the Brazilian actor and comedian Marco Antônio Eugênio Martini, known as Marquinhos, who died in 2019. He acted in the programme “João Kleber Show”, on RedeTV!, becoming famous in Brazil for acting in pranks and for using the mentioned catchphrase.2 The catchphrase does not have a stable meaning and was enunciated in the scenes performed by the comedian in various interaction situations – such as to express disbelief, surprise, nonconformity, dissatisfaction, etc. These situations involve, for the most part, a conflict experienced by the interlocutors, and the catchphrase can be interpreted as “a strategic exit” from the situation, being the trigger for the construction of humour in these interactions. What is interesting in this scene is that the funny element is not only the father’s resumption but in the fact that the child does it imitating the father and reverting the roles: the father’s voice echoes in G.’s voice. This is unexpected and causes disruption in the discourse. We can identify this resumption of the father’s voice with an acoustic analysis that was made comparing the usual speed of G.’s speech, of the father’s speech, and the final result of this imitation. Besides the intonation used by the child, there are different gestures (arms, body, etc.) that compose this singular communication. The prosody has an important role to highlight G.’s acting (Del Ré et al. 2015). It seems that there is a desire of the child to relax the tension of that moment and not to do what the father asks him to; and as the mockeries, the ironies, etc. are usual in the interactions between the father and the child, G. seems to know the effect that this speech will produce on his father, the laughter and the relaxation, and it happens because there are connivance and complicity between them. This other (the father) has, consequently, an essential role in the acquisition of humour by the child: it cannot be any other person there, because humour is not made with just anybody and the father is someone special and also, in the case of  Original dialogue in Portuguese: Pai: e os outros dois que vão correr. Pai: agora, esses tudo pode por tudo dentro da caixa, vai! G. o que, o que, o que, o que, o que, rapaz! G. veja se tem um carrinho aqui! de corrida! Pai:(riso) não tem nenhum! (pai sorri) G. é bom! 2  For more information about the origin of the catchphrase, see “Pegadinhas RedeTV!”, in which the humourist reports the creation of the catchphrase “What, what, what, boy”, available at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLezokyRjow 1

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situations of interaction with the child, this other will interpret G.’s productions all the time. It is thanks to situations like this one that will be repeated throughout the interactions between the child and the father, the child and the mother, etc. that G. will constitute his subjectivity, leaving singular clues in his discourse: a child who sees in humour a way out of situations that he wants to revert; he learns that humour works (at least with the father in this and in other situations). It was this discursive-dialogical look at the data, having the other as a fundamental piece in this interactional game (interplay), that allowed us to notice the humoristic nuances of this episode.

3.3 Final Considerations What seemed relevant to highlight from the scenes was the importance of the other (as well as the discourses that come together) in the constitution of this person’s subjectivity in and through the language. Initially, it is in the family (microculture) that everything the child does and speaks will be interpreted by the others, and even if they do not get exactly what the child really wants to say (we will never know it for sure), it is not important. The essential is to give meaning to what the child says, to be a language partner; it is to be the “broaden view” and, then, help the child constitute his/her own subjectivity. In the case of humour, the role of this other is also essential because it is the other who will be the child’s guide in what they must understand as humour, of what people laugh in that family: it is due to the link that will be created between the self and the other that humour is possible. By this time, we can extend these reflections to the topic of this book. If the other has such an important role in the initial discrimination of sounds, in everything that is related to the process of perception, in the production, it is not different, as we could see in the case of humour. And if the interaction with the other is connected to the construction of the child’s subjectivity in and with the language, we can suppose – at least we hope we can suppose – that the other will be important for the constitution of this person who will not discriminate against people in the future. If parents have such a huge influence in the child’s constitution as a subject in the language, by the language and through the language, all the elements, subsides, models, etc. they provide will help constitute the children’s subjectivity. If the parents have a position of looking at the world in a good-humoured way and with humour in the language, it will be part of the child’s constitution as a person, through the language, and it is through this language that other information, besides humour, can be shared. We can extend this “modus operandi” that involves the other, the constitution of subjectivity to other linguistic phenomena, such as bilingualism, for example. Even if it is not the objective of this text, it is important to point out that on these situations in which families have more than one first language, if the parents show the importance of cultures, the mother’s culture, the father’s culture, the

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families’ culture, the languages, etc., it could bring a discussion of valorization of discourses and not discrimination. If we understand the importance of the other in the constitution of the self – whoever this other may be and whatever they may bring to the self – how can we ever get to the point in which discrimination occurs? If we consider the role of the interaction with this other in order to become who we are, how can we ever value or undervalue them?

References AMORIM, M. O pesquisador e seu outro: Bakhtin nas ciências humanas. São Paulo: Musa, 2001. BAKHTIN, M. Estética da criação verbal. 6ª. Ed. Trad. Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: ed. WMF Martins Fontes, 2011. BAKHTIN, M. Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski. 2ª. Ed. Revista. Trad. Paulo Bezerra. Rio de Janeiro, Forense Universitária, 1997. BRUNER, J. S. Contexts and formats. In MOSCATO, M. ; PIRAUT-LE BONNIEC, G. (Eds.). Le langage: construction et actualisation. Rouen : Publications de l’Université de Rouen, 1984, p. 69–79 CLARK, H. H. Using Language. Cambridge. CUP, 1996. Coulson, S. Semantic Leaps. Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. DEL RÉ, A. A criança e a magia da linguagem: um estudo sobre o discurso humorístico. São Paulo, Cultura Acadêmica, 2011. DEL RÉ, A.; MORGENSTERN, A. To laugh or not to laugh: that is the question Les premières manifestations de l’humour chez l’enfant In: IADA 2009 - Polyphony and Intertextuality in Dialogue. Barcelona: University of Münster, v.2, p.41–54, 2010. DEL RÉ, A., DE PAULA, L.; MENDONÇA, M. A linguagem da criança: um olhar bakhtiniano. São Paulo, Contexto, 2014a. DEL RÉ, A., DE PAULA, L.; MENDONÇA, M. Explorando o discurso da criança. São Paulo, Contexto, 2014b. DEL RÉ, A. DODANE, C.; MORGENSTERN, A. De l’amusement partagé à la production de l’humour chez l’enfant In: L’humour dans le bassin méditerranéen: contacts linguistiques et culturels, 2013, Gafsa, Tunísia. L’humour dans le bassin méditerranéen: contacts linguistiques et culturels, éds Mokhtar FARHAT et Francis LACOSTE. Gafsa, Tunísia: Nouha éditions, 2015. v.1. p.115–139. DEL RÉ, A.; DODANE, C.; MORGENSTERN, A.  Enunciados humorísticos infantis em foco: implicações pragmáticas, cognitivas e sociais. Revista Linguística (Online), v. 35, n. 2, p.235–254, 2019. DEL RÉ, A.; DODANE, C.; MORGENSTERN, A.; VIEIRA, A.  J. Children’s development of humour in everyday interactions: two case-studies in French and Brazilian Portuguese. The European Journal of Humour Research. v. 8, p.112–131, 2020. DEL RÉ, A.; HILARIO, R.  N.; RODRIGUES, R.  A. O corpus NALingua e as tecnologias de apoio: a constituição de um banco de dados de fala de crianças no Brasil. Artefactum, Rio de Janeiro, v. 13, p.1–16, 2016. DEL RÉ, A.; HILÁRIO, R. N.; VIEIRA, A. J. Subjectivity, individuality and singularity in children: a socially constituted subject. Revista de Estudos do Discurso, v. 7, p.57–74, 2012. DEL RÉ, A.; HILARIO, R. N.; VIEIRA, A. J. The Child’s Language in the Dialogical-Discursive Perspective: Retrospective and Theoretical-Methodological Challenges for the Field of Language Acquisition. Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso, v. 16, p. 12–38, 2021.

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Available from: https://www.scielo.br/j/bak/a/dRS98pVJT4mJdmcc7JvkjyB/?format=pd f&lang=en. DEL RÉ, A.; ORVIG, A. S. Dialogical Views on Language Acquisition. Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso, v. 16, p. 4–11, 2021. Available from : https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/ bakhtiniana/article/view/51305/33486. Dodane et al. Riso e prosódia. In. Explorando o discurso da criança. Del Ré et al. (orgs), P.55–84, 2014. François, F. Morale et mise en mots. Paris: L’harmattan, 1994. Geraldi, J. W. Ancoragens: estudos bakhtinianos. São Carlos: Pedro & João Editores, 2010. Hoicka, E., and Akhtar, N. Early humour production. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 30, 586–603, 2012. Kintsch, Walter; Van Dijk, Teun Adrianus. Toward a model of text comprehension and production. Psychological review, v. 85, n. 5, p. 363, 1978. Lara, M.  T. de A., Mendonça, M.  C. Memes in Teaching Material: Considerations on the Teaching and Learning of Speech Genres. Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso, v. 15, p.195–220, 2020. Available from : https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/bakhtiniana/article/ view/42169/31616. LEVINSON, S.C. In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds.), 66-100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Mendonça, M.  C. Desafios metodológicos para os estudos bakhtinianos do discurso. In: GEGE. (Org.) Palavras e contrapalavras: enfrentando questões da metodologia bakhtiniana. São Carlos: Pedro & João Editores, 2012, p. 107–117. Mendonça, M. C. Discursos sobre a literacia familiar em contexto brasileiro: considerações sobre cronotopo e política educacional. In: Cristovão, A.; Bubnova, T.; Richartz, T. (Orgs.). Corpo, tempo e espaço. Franca, SP: Unifran, 2020. Mendonça, M. C.; Lara, M. T. de A. gêneros do discurso, ensino/aprendizagem e verbo-­visualidade: o caso do meme em um curso pré-vestibular online. PROLÍNGUA, [S. l.], v. 12, n. 2, 2017. DOI: 10.22478/ufpb.1983-9979.2017v12n2.38239. Available from: https://periodicos.ufpb.br/ index.php/prolingua/article/view/38239. PONZIO, A. A revolução bakhtiniana. Coordenação de tradução: Valdemir Miotello. São Paulo: Contexto, 2008. POSSENTI, S. Cinco ensaios sobre humor e análise do discurso. São Paulo, Parábola, 2018. Salazar-Orvig, A. et al. Dialogical beginnings of anaphora: The use of third person pronouns before the age of 3. Journal of Pragmatics 42, p. 1842–1865, 2010. VOLÓCHINOV, V. Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem. Problemas fundamentais do método sociológico na ciência da linguagem. 1. ed. Tradução, Ensaio Introdutório, Glossário e Notas de S. V. C. Grillo e. V. Américo. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2017. VOLÓCHINOV, V. A palavra na vida e a palavra na poesia: ensaios, artigos, resenhas e poemas. Organização, tradução, ensaio introdutório e notas de Sheila Grillo e Ekaterina V. Américo. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2019. VYGOTSKY, L. S. A construção do pensamento e da linguagem. Tradução de Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2001. 496 p. Título original: Michliênie Rietch

Chapter 4

Discrimination in Early Childhood Education: Considerations About Communication and Ethical Responsibility in Pedagogical Practices Angelina Nunes de Vasconcelos and Nadja Vieira

Abstract  The purpose of this paper is to discuss the stereotypes and discrimination produced by educators in early childhood education. The stereotypes are a result of theories that standardize and prescribe universal stages of child’s development and are used by teachers in their practice. The application of this knowledge in pedagogical activities and evaluation processes causes damages to the education of children. We argue that, by referencing these theories in their practice, educators build an abstract image of children and develop precarious conceptual and methodological approaches. In educational settings, this functioning reveals itself as practices of exclusion and discrimination, since many children do not respond satisfactorily to the abstract parameters of teaching and assessment adopted by educators. In contrast, the methodological approaches and pedagogical perspective should focus on broad recognition of cultural diversity, and the effects of the interdependence between organism and environment, promoting changes in child’s development. We consider the current guidelines for early childhood education prescribed by the Brazilian Common National Curriculum Base (BNCC) and shared notes through research on inclusion in the fields of education and educational psychology. To raise questions about the ethical responsibility of the child educator, we assume the need for a more effective look at local and situated emergencies implied by the central role of communicative processes in child’s development. Keywords  Childhood education · Communication · Ethical responsibility

A. N. de Vasconcelos (*) · N. Vieira Federal University of Alagoas, Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_4

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4.1 General Considerations This article addresses the interface between psychology and education. The history of the two fields of knowledge and practice is intertwined in such a way that it is possible to state that the advancement of psychology as a science in Brazil is related to its involvement within educational issues. That can be exemplified by the following questions addressed to psychology: How does the child learn? How to educate indigenous peoples? How to work with learning problems (Antunes 2008)? Likewise, historically, education has often turned to psychology to seek explanations about the teaching-learning process and guidelines for proposing pedagogical practices aligned with processes underlying child’s development (Guzzo et al. 2010). Many educators report the challenge of understanding child’s development and its impacts on their classroom activities. That reality justifies their search for foundations and explanations in psychology with the objective of its application in early childhood education. For this purpose, themes and theories of psychology, with different epistemological perspectives, are rescued and incorporated into the field of education. However, very often, the transport of explanations between these two fields of knowledge – from psychology to education – is mobilized without a necessary critical analysis. That is not an argument against interdisciplinarity. On the contrary, we defend that it is an important aspect of producing knowledge about human development and the development of services both in psychology and in education. We draw attention, however, to the fact that the dialogue between different fields of knowledge must be encouraged, preserving the opportunities for a critical and in-­ depth analysis of the impact in the transfer of information between the two fields. In this text, we deal with an analysis of the impact of theories about child’s development formulated in the field of psychology and adopted for the activities of early childhood education. Our focus is on the theories’ effects on educational services for children. These theories are based on nomothetic approaches (such as the theory of evolutionary developmental psychology (Bjorklund and Bering 2003)), as well as theories that prescribe universal laws and stages in child’s development (such as theories of moral development (Shimizu 2005)). Human development is defined as a progression of phases, organized as sequences, according to nomothetic theories. Naturally, this is not the only epistemological perspective of psychology about human development. However, we draw attention to situations that arise during the importation of these theories into the field of education. It is necessary to reflect on what Valsiner (2012) called the democracy of literature, referring to the hegemony of one method of scientific inquiry over others. The author coined this term about the hegemony of the experimental method, which has traditionally predominated in the history of scientific research. Valsiner is against this hegemony and highlighted the inadequacy of this method to explain the processes of human development, considering it as a historical and cultural constitution activated through the uses of language. We argue that this hegemony favors

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the lack of criticism of educators, who adopt nomothetic explanations from psychology to their practices. In other words, we argue here that educators who appropriate classical developmental theories create prescriptive pedagogical practices in the name of psychology. Thus, for example, schools establish, in child’s development, arbitrary parameters and milestones, which are used in their assessment exercises to select, classify, and segment children. In contrast, we advocate that the convergence between these two fields of knowledge and practices – psychology and education – must be based on the recognition of the central role of language for development.

4.2 Human Development Mediated by Communicative Processes The idiographic perspective applied to research in psychology opens possibilities to the construction of more complex explanations, which reflect on what we observe in everyday situations about human development. These possibilities are materialized through the diversification of methods, reflecting the researchers’ commitment to the renovation of conceptions about the production of scientific knowledge. In the scope of the discussions, the diversification has enabled explanations about the cultural constitution of cognitive and emotional processes, and it is the object of attention of educators in the analysis of the teaching-learning process involving children. These explanations highlight the processes of a symbolic nature (semiotic), operating through the uses of language. These operations, therefore, need to be considered to understand child’s development in educational settings. In other words, when it comes to child’s development, we need to focus our attention on the children’s production of concepts and meanings. Children’s cultural experiences are revealed in the processes of production of meanings as values and emotions about the world. The situation becomes even more complex when we observe that not only children but teachers, principals, school members, and the family act through the uses of language in educational settings.1 Therefore, it is necessary to recognize the broad interdependence of different aspects involved in the child’s development. In educational services, these diverse aspects converge to communicative processes.2

 For further discussions on this topic, see the Chap. 5 by Lanz in this book.  For further discussions on this topic, see the Chap. 3 by Del Ré and Mendonça in this book.

1 2

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4.3 BNCC:3 Taking a Look at Child’s Development The relevance of the discussions about child’s development in the context of education and the reasons for our discussion on the adoption of traditional theories in psychology for pedagogy are both confirmed when we analyze the propositions of the Brazilian Common National Curriculum Base (BNCC) for early childhood education. In this sense, we asked: what conception of child’s development is underlying the BNCC? The BNCC was instituted in 2018, and although surrounded by important controversies and questions, it formalized early childhood education (0–5 years) as the first stage of basic education. This official normative document also recognizes the stage of early childhood education not only as a right of mothers and families but as an opportunity for child care and assistance, based on their own educational goals and specific pedagogical strategies. We recognize that the relationship between learning and development is absent in traditional theories of development, and it implies conceiving the development as transformations related to human action in the sociocultural environment. This conception is not aligned with the prescription of universal stages of child’s development. The organization of childhood learning in structuring axes such as interactions and plays/games, as well as the emphasis on the six learning rights of children, to live with others, to play, to participate, to explore, to express, and to know themselves (Brasil 2018), enables us to interpret that learning and development are continuous processes and related to active interpersonal relationships between children, family, community, and school. To be attentive to this continuity allows us to see that learning is not about acquiring content or themes that are expected to be repeated in assessment processes. At BNCC, learning objectives are organized into five fields of experience: the self, the other, and us (interaction with peers and adults); body, gestures, and movements (exploring the world, space, and objects); traces, sounds, colors, and shapes (experiencing different forms of expression and languages); listening, speaking, thinking, and imagining (exploring resources of expression and understanding); and spaces, times, quantities, relationships, and transformations (expanding knowledge of the physical and sociocultural world) (Brasil 2018). The organization of the curriculum in fields of experiences gives visibility to children’s contexts, interactions, and actions, in which meaning-making processes take place, and they reflect the children’s appropriation and negotiation of cultural values in their community. In this way, the national regulation for education reveals its broad consideration to the role of the uses of language in early childhood education by predicting that the child uses not only verbal but also body language, with gestures, crying, and movements that are produced in play and games to communicate and learn. With this consideration, the BNCC presupposes that the educator must enhance  Common National Curriculum Base: The  BNCC is the  new curricular standards proposed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education for all levels of the education system. 3

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modalities of language uses, such as, for example, the relationship between speech and action, differentiation of musical aspects of speech, speech-writing relationship, and other things. Thus, this enhancement reaches the level of the language-­ thought relationship to enable imagination and creativity.

4.4 Uses of Language and Ethical Responsiveness in Early Childhood Education This analysis leads us to interpret that child educators need to review their conception of child’s development if they aim to exercise the guidelines prescribed by the BNCC, especially in the case of beliefs in universal laws of human development. The review is necessary so that the educator learns to deal with the diversity immanent in the children’s expressions, instead of framing them in standardized expectations. When educators assume that the diversity of children’s actions and interactions is their ground of work and the scenery for their educational act, this assumption presupposes the promotion of human development at the individual and collective levels. A question, therefore, is appropriate: how can the educator deal with this diversity? One possible answer is through responsiveness. Responsiveness was addressed by Bakhtin (2010) in his discussions about the property of addressing (another person) that ratifies language uses. In these discussions, the author pointed out that the answers – as acts of reaction in the enunciation – are the principle for the production of meanings in discursive practices, which are considered as a way of organizing human actions in the world. In other words, human experiences in the world are diverse and constantly changing and are also organized individually and collectively based on the production of meanings about them. We must pay attention, above all, to the possibility that the meaning-making process resides in the act of responsiveness: “With meaning I give answers to questions. Anything that does not answer a question is devoid of sense for us” (Bakhtin 2003, p.381). These explanations point to the need for pedagogical practices to respect and integrate the different characteristics of real children – which means they should consider children real and active people in concrete situations. On the other hand, one of the toughest challenges that schools, in general, are currently dealing with is the difficulty to face children in these conditions of uniqueness. In addition to that, there is an excessive bureaucratization of teaching work, in which teachers are obliged to document, assess, and often submit indexes and data of their practices. The need for constant proof of the value of their work and the child’s advances is heavy, and it can overburden the daily teaching work. The difficulty in dealing with this demand is perhaps one of the reasons for the search for support and anchoring in the stability of the establishment of universal laws for children’s development. The assumptions of BNCC seem to require another direction for the pedagogical action, which points out to the importance of looking at the encounter between

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children and the resources of the environment. It is necessary to analyze how little students learn and integrate the culturally organized ways of seeing and acting in the world (developing the concept of self and of the other). In educational contexts, these strategies of interaction with the world must be explored, and it is the role of teachers to observe how children develop, their preferences, and the new elements or variations introduced in their behavior. In other words, educators need to observe the characteristics and rhythms of children’s actions and response development, just as their variations. It is necessary to pay attention to how children respond to the objects and people around them, and how they produce meaning about the world, based on parameters and concepts in the pedagogical context. That is, how the educational environment provides conceptual and instrumental lenses through which children produce meaning and organize their actions in the world. We emphasize that acting at the level of responsiveness has relevant ethical implications for the educational act. It is up to the educator to be aware of the child’s expressions to ensure his/her accessibility to different levels of educational processes: conceptual and methodological, material, personal, interpersonal, and social-political. And also, it is important to be aware of the dynamics of responses configured in the communicative relationship between the educator and the child. It is on this platform – in the dynamics of communication between the two of them – that the ethical exercise of pedagogy takes place.

4.5 The Surplus of Vision as an Educational Act Vieira (2016) uses Bakhtin’s assumptions to approach ethics in the production of meanings in early life. Reflecting on these assumptions, the author refers to ethics as “a space for the real and responsible execution of an action” (p. 178). The author also references Bakhtin’s analysis of human exercise of ethics in their actions related to the aesthetic experience. In this analysis, the ethical-aesthetic relationship is understood from the phenomenon of the surplus of vision. About that, Vieira (2016) declared: It is urgent that the surplus of vision completes the horizon of the contemplated individual without losing its originality. In this process, the axiological exercise of the contemplator who empathically imprints values (will, knowledge, feeling) onto the contemplated object, as he sees it, is implied, putting himself in its place. (p. 180)

The surplus of vision that the educator has related to the child about the benefits of the educational act is what promotes the ethical implications in this work, which translates into the focus on the uses of language in the pedagogy act in early childhood education. In other words, by intervening in the child’s meaning production process through the dynamics of responsiveness, the educators exert and imprint their values that impact the achievement of the purpose of the educational act. For example, if the educators believe that their goal is to normalize the child, they will probably interpret children’s development within age behavior patterns, such as

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having a predefined vocabulary level, having an expected memory capacity, or having a pattern of interpersonal relationships for a certain age and school level. These beliefs will have an impact on promoting the child’s development, considering their effects on the child’s production of meanings about himself/herself and the world. In this perspective, it is the responsibility of the educator to interpret, react, and respond to children’s expressions. By acting this way, the educator shares their beliefs based on their consumption of theories, reflection on their practices, and other experiences in the world. There is, therefore, an asymmetry in this exercise, which we assess here through the discussion of the surplus of vision. In the role of educator, it is possible to contemplate the children from a point of view that they cannot reach themselves. By delimiting, interpreting, and evaluating children’s actions and behaviors, the educator gives them a completion aligned with their cultural background and axiological positions, translated here as an aesthetic completion (Bakhtin 2003; Vieira 2016). The transposition of the lived plan to the attribution of values, as a semiotic nature of psychological experiences (Vygotsky 1995, Vigotski 2009; Valsiner 2012), is the main function of the educator, although everyone who interacts with the child (school staff, parents, caregivers, other children) also exerts a surplus of vision. However, the conceptual completion is a characteristic of the educational act, based on the integration of learning with human development. The teachers mediate this completion as they conceptualize the children’s experiences in the universe of pedagogical activities that, in turn, must preserve the continuum of life in and out of school.

4.6 Final Considerations: From Discrimination to the Inclusion of Ethical Reflection in Pedagogical Actions in Early Childhood Education We conclude that the exercise of the surplus of vision can permeate the actions of discrimination in the pedagogical context, which depends on the values cultivated by educators from their formation and practices. We discussed in this chapter that the need to understand child’s development has led educators to apply theories that prescribe universal human development laws in their pedagogical practices. Then, we highlighted the high risk that this application has, as it promotes stereotypes and discrimination, since educators lose sight of the fact that children make sense of their own experiences in the world. Intending to avoid the risk of discrimination, this article pointed out the focus on the uses of language as a central aspect for an approach to human development integrated with learning in educational settings. To reduce the insecurity of educators about the effective reach of inclusion in many educational institutions, especially in public schools, we defend that the focus on the uses of language should guide an inclusive-based pedagogy. We assume that the disbelief in inclusive practices is due to the absence of a discussion about the

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epistemological bases of the inclusion proposal, which, historically, has been reflecting on the referrals and decisions of a practical nature. We endorse the integration of these practical initiatives with their epistemological assumptions, and we point out here that the operations of a semiotic nature, that is, operations activated in the uses of language or the process of meaning-making, are an organizing principle of human experiences in the world. Aligning the educational act with this principle, in our view, is adopting behaviors to prevent discrimination and the dissemination of stereotypes within the scope of pedagogical activities in early childhood education.

References ANTUNES, M. A. M. Psicologia Escolar e Educacional: história, compromissos e perspectivas. Psicologia escolar e educacional, v. 12, n. 2, p.469-475, 2008. BAKHTIN, M. Apontamentos de 1970–1971. In: BAKHTIN, M. Estética da criação verbal 4. ed. Trad. Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2003, p.367–392. BAKHTIN, M. Para uma filosofia do ato responsável. Trad. por Valdemir Miotello; Carlos Alberto Faraco. São Carlos: Pedro & João Editores, 2010. BJORKLUND, D. F.; BERING, J. M. A note on the development of deferred imitation in enculturated juvenile chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Developmental Review, v. 23, p.389–412, 2003. BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Base nacional comum curricular: educação é a base. Brasília: MEC, 2018. GUZZO, R.  S.; MEZZALIRA, A.  S.; MOREIRA, A.  P. G.; TIZZEI, R.  P.; SILVA NETO, W.  M. D.  F. Psicologia e Educação no Brasil: uma visão da história e possibilidades nessa relação. Psicologia: teoria e pesquisa, v. 26(SPE), p.131–141, 2010. SHIMIZU, A. D. M. Os instrumentos de medida de julgamento moral elaborados com base na teoria do desenvolvimento moral de Kohlberg. Revista Científica Eletrônica de Psicologia, v. 3, n. 4, 2005. VALSINER, J. Fundamentos da psicologia cultural – Mundos da mente mundos da vida. Porto Alegre: LTDA, 2012. VIEIRA, N. M. Ética e estética na produção de sentidos no começo da vida: considerações sobre a simultaneidade do passado e futuro no presente. Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso, v. 11, n. 3, p.174–195, 2016. VIGOTSKI, L.S. A construção do pensamento e da linguagem. Trad. Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2009. VYGOTSKI, L. S. Obras escolhidas. Tomo III. Madri: Visor, 1995.

Chapter 5

Doing Research with Children: Case Studies Challenging Bias of Understanding the World Helza Ricarte Lanz

Abstract  Based on two different case studies, one in Germany and the other one in the back lands of Brazil, we intend to show that it is possible to do action research with young children and that children can speak and be heard. In an action research, children are not only informants but may also gain personal benefits by participating in research. After a literature review of our theoretical frame on children and children education, action research as an inquiry method will be presented; the first case study with a fieldwork that took place during Spring and Summer of 2016  in Germany and the second case study with a fieldwork that took place in July 2019 will be described. It seems very important to reflect on the researcher’s attitudes when researching with young children. The article concludes that participating in realities that challenge our biases enables a series of questions about what are indeed the necessary skills to excel and teach in the twenty-first century. Keywords  Children · Childhood · Research with young children · Action research

5.1 Introduction The main topic of this book will be approached in this paper from the perspective of doing research with children who have experienced discrimination and segregation in their very short lives, on the one hand, and violence and child abuse on the other. As a researcher and educator, I asked the following questions for this survey: How can I contribute to a better life for young children who live realities that are so distant from my own? Is it possible to do research with small children and how can we collect data when researcher and children do not speak the same language or do not have the same cultural background? Can children benefit from research?

H. R. Lanz (*) University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_5

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Based on two different case studies, one in Germany and the other one in the back lands of Brazil, we intend to show that it is possible to do action research with young children and that children can speak and be heard. In an action research, children are not only informants but may also gain personal benefits by participating in research.

5.2 Theoretical Framework: Literature Review The terms “child” and “childhood” are closely linked to ideas of development or also to education, learning, and growing up. Both terms integrate ambivalences and refer to historical and cultural diversities that make it impossible to speak of “the” child or “the” childhood. It seems significant that childhood does not exist in isolation but in difference and in connection especially with adulthood. The perspective on children and childhood brings differentiations and similarities within the generational order into view and questions about possibilities for action and limits that these orders allow or open up. In this sense, the constructions of differences and similarities between childhood and youth or between childhood and adulthood result in important pedagogical questions and directions. Contemporary childhood educational perspectives and research on children and childhood relate primarily to educational-normative issues, to distinctions or performative practices of adults with children, to experiences that children have in their childhood, and to the question of processes of education in early childhood (Dietrich et al. 2019, 9 ff.). In recent years, one can observe increased professionalization expectations in connection with questions of the quality of early and childhood educational services. The idea of a developing competent child is derived from at least two theoretical perspectives: the developmental and the competence discourses. Both discourses are particularly found in the Education Plans of the federal states for elementary education in Germany (Blaschke-Nacak et al. 2018, p.21). The structuring pattern of childhood is a learning and developmental childhood that is oriented toward a “positive” adulthood (cf. Honig 1999). In particular with reference to psychological developmental theories (cf. Blaschke-Nacak and Thörner 2019, p.35.), but also to neuroscientific and cognitive sciences (cf. Drieschner and Staege 2019, p.47.), the ideas of what children are as well as what childhood is are linked to certain norms and age-standardized assumptions about child’s development and on certain pedagogical goals. On the other hand, the so-called constructed child’s perspective derives from sociological-oriented childhood research. Childhood is seen as a historical variable and socially generated generational order, and children are seen as social actors (Drieschner and Staege 2019, p.51). Accordingly, childhood researches rather focus on childhood as a pattern or a context that “frames everyday life and social relationships with children” (Honig 1999, p.162) into pedagogical relationships with recourse to different constructivist approaches. With reference to the concept of

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co-construction, which Youniss (1994) originally coined for the analysis of peer interactions, Fthenakis (2003) developed a social-constructivist perspective on pedagogical interaction processes, more precisely the relevance of the educator-­child interaction on the micro level and on the macro level the social integration of the actively learning child. The interaction is framed by the sociocultural context as well as the individual life relationships that children and adults bring into the pedagogical situation. As Drischner and Staege (2019, p.56) argue, it appears problematic that “(…) the socially constructivistically based image of the child as a competent actor can imply an illusory independence of children, if their physical and psychological dependence on care, attention and even instruction from the more competent Elderly is hidden.”1 In contrast to the above mentioned theoretical perspectives, phenomenological works, which particularly refer to the corporeality of earlier experience of children (cf. in Germany especially the works of Stenger, Stieve, Lippitz, and Meyer-Drawe; cf. Dietrich, Stenger, and Stieve (2019)) and understand education as physical, corporeal, performative, and mimetic responses of “a mover that moves with the appeals from the environment” (Blaschke-Nacak et  al. 2018, p.24), can also be mentioned here. Phenomenologically oriented early childhood education and childhood research are based on a phenomenology of corporeal experience. Body experience is based on receptivity. Because without something being experienced, perceived or felt, bodily perception and experience cannot take place. The passive, receptive character of experience shows that experience is always an experience of others. Waldenfels defines it as an elementary threshold phenomenon. On the threshold where we meet the foreign, we experience our own body as a reference to withdrawal (cf. Waldenfels 2002, 187–192). The passive and receptive side of the corporeality establishes the malleability and vulnerability of the body. (Brinkmann 2019, p.159)

From a phenomenological perspective, educational experience is a shared experience in educational situations. Upbringing is not understood as an intentional act or as an act of passing knowledge and cultural practices from adults to children. Therefore, education cannot be seen as one-sided: only from the child’s point of view or only from the educator’s point of view, but rather as an intersubjective and intercultural process, understood as realization. The experience structure of the lifeworld makes it possible to focus on the subjective, prerational, and pre-predicative dimensions of experience of children in their own sense. Vulnerability and strangeness in pedagogical situations can therefore come into focus. Children are symbolically more vulnerable than adults because their self-image and self-respect are even more unprotected and less stable than by adults. Discrimination, stigmatization, and other forms of rejection – especially in social relationships that are important for children and young people – generally have a major influence on emotional, cognitive, volitional, and behavioral structures as well as on physical and psychological well-being. They essentially affect the self-­confidence and self-image of the person being discriminated against and create  For a focused discussion on discrimination in early childhood education, see the chapter by Prof. Dr. Angelina Nunes de Vasconcelos and Nadja Vieira in this book. 1

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states of rejection, devaluation, and not belonging. In doing so, they counteract a central human desire, that of social recognition, acceptance, and integration into a community (cf. Honeth 2003). Axels Honerth’s concept grasps the original mode of recognition as an appreciative confirmation and views this – albeit mutually thought – as a practical condition of a positive relationship to oneself (Honeth 2003, p.308). The development of his understanding of recognition in three spheres, love (as recognition of needs and affects through emotional affection), law (as recognition of cognitive respect), and solidarity or appreciation (as recognition of performance as social appreciation), follows the logic of affirmation and then the corresponding forms of disregard figure as recognition deficits. Reh and Ricken (2012, p.41–42) have shown that Honeth’s recognition theory can be expanded in four shifts (which we will only mention and not fully develop in the present article): recognition is a structure of existence (1); recognition is necessarily also a failure and withdrawal, that means positivity cannot be determined (2); recognition must be seen as encouraging action (3); and recognition must also be thought of as submission and transgression (4). They therefore suggest operationalizing recognition as addressing: how one is addressed by whom, before whom, and as who and is addressed explicitly or implicitly. Children are particularly vulnerable beings who should not suffer physically or mentally and should be able to live a good life. Despite the different development requirements and the different tasks associated with children, child care, childhood, and education, one must acknowledge the great importance of trust, recognition, and support from parents, educators, and adults close to the children for child’s happiness, well-being, and good life.

5.3 Action Research as an Inquiry Method Internationally, action-based and participatory research methods are well known and may be seen as a well-established part of qualitative research with many textbooks and research guides, for example, in English (Reason; Bradbury 2013) or Portuguese (Gil 2010). In the German context, action research “always had and still has a very weak position” (Fricke 2011, p.249). Unger, Block, and Wright (2007) trace the history of action research in the German-speaking discourse highlighting its developments, critical debate in the social sciences, and continuities for promoting community-based health prevention to socially disadvantaged groups. Action research is a research strategy which combines research with action and participation in the field. In action research, however, people are not just subjects but partners in the research process. The research arises not out of a question from an external individual but as a shared process of reflection between the researcher and the participants. The latter help gather data in relation to their own questions or situation, and the research results are fed back to them directly to improve the situation that was the subject of the research.

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The concept of action research goes back to the German social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947). He was particularly concerned with social justice and racial discrimination, seeing the latter as linked with problems of gatekeepers who determined what was and was not done. He believed that efforts for change should be focused on the group, which should challenge group norms and processes and produce real change for the people involved in the research. In his essay “Action Research and Minority Problems,” Lewin describes this method as “research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action, and research leading to social action” (Lewin 1946, p.35). Action research can also be seen in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1987) and other works. As in many other qualitative methodologies, the researchers see themselves as part of the research process, acknowledging their ability and role to actively influence the process through the research. In action research, it is key to reflect on one’s often multiple positionalities. The research starts from a vision of social transformation and aspirations for greater social justice for all, involves a high level of reflexivity, involves exploratory engagement with a wide range of existing knowledge, engenders powerful learning for participants, and locates the inquiry in an understanding of broader historical, political, and ideological contexts (cf. Somekh 2006, p.6–8). The purpose of action research is to solve daily and immediate problems and improve concrete practices. Its fundamental purpose is to bring information to guide decision-making for programs, processes, and structural reforms. In this type of research, the researcher not only raises questions or problems but seeks to trigger actions and evaluate them together with the population involved. The processes of data collection, analysis, interpretation, and introduction of action strategies do not happen in the clear order often found in other research methods but often happen holistically, more or less simultaneously and often in cycles. For the sake of brevity, I cannot examine all cycles of my fieldwork in depth here, but I will provide a summary and place my research in this continuum.

5.4 The Case Study in Germany The year of 2015 was a very unusual year in Germany’s postwar history. The statistics office registered in 2015 under two million immigrants arriving in Germany, while 860,000 departed again. “Net immigration increased by 49 percent in 2015 and for the first time most of the arrivals were not from Europe”; many refugees were fleeing war-torn countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa (Sanders 2016). According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF 2017), 745,545 people applied for asylum in Germany in 2016 – an annual high since the Federal Office was founded. Among the 253,365 minors, 14.5% were registered under the age of six (BAMF 2017). An increasing number of very young children and their families are afflicted by poverty, persecution, cultural conflict, violence, and war in their native countries and obliged to migrate in order to survive and to pursue a better life. Yet on arrival

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in the host country, they often face additional systemic and cultural barriers. Discrimination is closely related to the unfair and prejudicial treatment of different groups of people based on features such as race, gender, religion, or income, which is extremely prevalent in almost every society of the world. One cannot assume that young children are unaware of differences and that they do not discriminate on the basis of gender, relative wealth, ethnicity, and other characteristics. Children quickly learn from their environment to mimic the dominant society’s discriminatory behavior unless those biases are challenged. The fieldwork in Germany took place in 2016 in the village where I live. The city administration provided two houses as accommodation or shelter for refugees who entered Germany since 2015. In the two houses, adults and children, families, and single people lived and shared the same common space for a while. As a neighbor and as a researcher as well, it was not possible to figure out how many people lived there nor to say how long they would stay in this address, even when asking the local administration. In this year, there was a strong non-transparent rotation of people in the refugee shelters. Inside the two houses, during the year 2016, there were mattresses in every room, a kitchen with a table and chairs, and the common space outside the house with many plastic chairs. Privacy or family life in these two houses could not possibly exist. My concerns were about the many children who lived in such governmental shelters. How to get to know them? Is there any possibility to make their time in the village a little more child-friendly? How to access children’s view of the world without using languages? Actually, this research started accidentally. I did have the intention to help families and children living as refugees in Germany in a non-paternalistic way. I just did not know how to start. It was springtime. On one Saturday morning, I was outside my house trying to get my car clean, when a young man and an 11-year-old boy came to me and asked if they could clean up the weeds in front of my house. They did not speak any German language and the communication was sign-based. I smiled and let them know that I would be glad to get some help from them. They showed me a broken kitchen knife. I offered water, gloves, and other utensils more suitable to remove weeds. About one hour later, the weed in front of my house was eliminated, and they walked to the house leaving everything I gave them in front of my door. I put a 20-euro bill in an envelope and walked in the afternoon to the shelter, about three houses away from my house. There were many people outside the house, it was a beautiful sunny day, but I did not remember their faces anymore. The little boy recognized me and came in my direction. He pulled me by the hand and took me to where the parents were. I gave the envelope and could see in their faces that they were glad to receive this payment. They asked me to sit down and to drink a cup of tea with them, which I did. The family had five children, and they had walked all the way from Syria to Austria and then Munich, Germany, and from there on with the train to my town. That is what I understood from the few words the children said in German to my questions. The children’s ages of this particular family were at that time 11, 8, 6, and

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4  years and a baby a few months old. The two boys of 11 and 8  years old were enrolled in the school in the village close to ours and could say some words and phrases in German. A six-year-old boy was going to start school after summer, and the little girl did not go to Kindergarten and was supposed to take care of the baby. After being with them for a while, I thanked them for the tea and went home. At home, I tried to take notes on everything I had seen and experienced. Afterward, I went to town and bought a bucket of colored chalk, plastic balls, toys, and cars. Besides that, I put together used toys I had at home. On Sunday, I took a box with the toys to the kids. Instead of having tea with them – they did invite me again – I decided to invite them to get to know a little of the village, the playground, the volunteer firefighters, and the social equipment we have in town. After making many signs, the mother, the girl, and the baby accompanied me. The boys and their father remained in the garden of the house playing ball. After that first weekend, a four-year-old girl would wait for me every day in front of the house. As I passed by car after work, I stopped shortly and got out of the car, and she would show me the drawings she had made with the colored chalk I had given her. The mother waved every time I passed by, and after all, the father asked me if I had another job for him, which I did not have, but I asked neighbors if they needed his help. Sometimes, the mother, the girl, and the baby would go with me to the playground. During the next weeks, I could see that the boys were also going to play at the playground. The little girl was taking care of the baby, while the mother was working cleaning some houses in the neighborhood. During the time between spring and summer that year, a four-year-old girl and I got closer. We went together with the parents to the Kindergarten in our village, but she could not go there because there was no vacancy until summer. So, I decided to help her on my own. My intention was to try to understand how a four-year-old girl understood her situation or how she saw the world around her, as well as to give her the possibility to feel fortified and confident with her siblings and other male children. I gave her paper and colored pencils. I felt that she wanted to show me more of herself. Her drawings were very scribbled, partly monochrome, and partly colorful. They gave her a little break from the activities she had to do taking care of the baby. She showed them to me quite often and kept them as a treasure. I gave her a metal box so she could keep her drawings. Since I could not understand her and she could not tell me anything about the drawings, because we did not speak the same language, I thought I would have to look for another way to access and understand more of the child’s worldview. I decided to use photography and videography as a method of access without language. I charged the battery of an old smartphone I had at home, erased everything that was on the device, and decided to give it to her as a gift. I showed her how to make a picture and how to make a video and left the device with her. I showed her parents (with signs) that I was giving her the device. In the next few weeks, I could see many of the pictures she was taking. Some pictures I could not tell what she wanted to show. But many other pictures were about her and her life. I would like to discuss some of these pictures. There were

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many pictures of doors and windows; most of the time, they were half opened. She also took many pictures of her feet and her hands. She also took pictures of the house in front of the shelter. She took pictures of the way to the playground, of the grass, the sand pit, and many pictures of roads. She also took pictures of the baby, her other siblings, her parents, and other children. I asked myself, what did she want to show with her pictures? I will probably never know. One may say that most of the pictures and videos were about movement. Actually, her young life was almost a big movement. But the important point of the case study was that this little girl got within her siblings and parents a different position than before. The little girl acted as a sort of gatekeeper for them. Her position within the family and siblings has changed over the weeks. Every time they wanted to talk with me or ask for jobs, she came with them. They would ask her to take a picture of something they want for them. I could notice that her self-­confidence was much higher than before, maybe because she could take pictures on this device. The other family members realized that she was important and that she could play a significant role for the whole family. The family moved from the shelter in the summer of 2016. One day, they were not there anymore. She left a drawing for me. When I passed by the shelter, someone gave it to me. I do not know if they were recognized as refugees. They probably were. I hope they were. Maybe they could move to an apartment just for the family. I guess, through these short but meaningful interactions, the life and her position in the family were now on the move and on the making.

5.5 The Case Study in Brazil The fieldwork in Brazil took place in July 2019  in a quilombo in the State of Pernambuco. We were invited by a friend and colleague who teaches at a university in the State of Ceara, Brazil, to take part in this interesting exchange between a quilombo community and universities. Quilombo is the denomination for communities of African descendants who resisted the slavery regime that prevailed in Brazil during the whole colonial time and was officially abolished in 1888. After centuries of repression and invisibility, only in 1988 did quilombolas (residents of a quilombo) gain some more visibility. Article 68 of the Act of Transitory Constitutional Dispositions, part of the 1988 Federal Constitution, stipulates “[...] the remnants of quilombo communities who occupy their lands are hereby recognized as having definitive title to their land, while the state shall issue them the respective titles” (Brasil 1988). Quilombos were formed from a wide variety of processes that include the escape of slaved workers to free isolated lands and/or land purchase both during the term of the slave regime and after its abolition. In this specific quilombo, community land was bought by women in the nineteenth century, and this fact strongly influenced the community’s history, which is told and remembered through its oral tradition. The very beginning of the

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community is allied with the arrival of six women to the land, guided by a fugitive slave, where they settled and where they were able to buy the land, due to their work in the cotton fields. As stated by Leite (2010), there is a predominance of the feminine leadership both in the historical and contemporary communities, where the women are actively participating in the political and social organization, managing associations and syndicates in order to fight for the right to citizenship that contemplates the community’s ethnic and cultural context. The community of Conceição das Crioulas is inhabited by approximately 750 families, who identify themselves as descendants from slaves. The quilombo’s land is recognized by the Brazilian government, and then they do have the land title and the community is known for the persistent fight for land rights and the desire to preserve its historical background and identity. Back in the 1990s of the last century, an action research movement started by a group of researchers and students from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, Portugal. By maintaining relationships with several higher education institutions in Portugal, Brazil Northeast, Mozambique, and Cape Verde, several interdisciplinary activities were developed over the years with the intention to explore the value of cultural relationships (Paiva 2009, p.56) through the fields of artistic education, children education, cultural heritage, digital literacy, video, photography, self-­ representation, and collective activities. The event in 2019 lasted one week and was organized by the community association with support of Professor Paiva (University of Porto, Portugal) and involved around 50 visitors to the community’s field. These visitors were professors, researchers, and students from many universities: University of Porto (Portugal), University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB), University of Cariri (Ceará, Brazil), University of Brasília (Brazil), State University of Ceará (Brazil), Federal University of Ceará (Brazil), Arts and Technology University Institute of Cape Verde (Cape Verde), and University of Cologne (Germany). Most of them were actively participating in giving or attending courses and workshops in different areas, such as education, arts and crafts, artistic expression, communication, and media. This community action research was published (cf. Paiva 2020). The external visitors were hosted by the community’s members, either sharing bedrooms or living rooms with the community’s hosts. During the week of research, we had our meals at the headquarter of the community’s association, AQCC (Quilombola Association of the Community of Conceição das Crioulas), gathering on a line and one by one being served by the community’s cookers, who were about five women per meal. The headquarters had a big space with many plastic chairs and tables, which were stored in a room every night. We ate all the meals together and washed our dishes inside a big bucket of water. Water was a precious and rare element, since the community did not have running water anywhere. The water was provided by a truck that would come twice a month to fill the water reservoirs outside each house. On Sunday, as we arrived and presented ourselves at the AQCC headquarter, we had a sort of potlatch, exchanged gifts, meals, and beverages and got to know each other, where we were going to stay and what we would be doing next morning. The

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time during the week of research was structured by workshops that had the length of five days in the schedule from 8:00 am until 1:00 pm and from 2:00 pm until 5:00 pm and was restructured daily according to the feedback obtained during each session. I wrote in my diary: We were received in such a warm welcoming way by the community that it would be impossible not to highlight here the people, the exchanges, the listening, the speeches, the meetings, the songs, the dances, the arts, the workshops, the flavors, the enriching knowledge that they enable us to broaden our horizons and invite us to take new paths. By moving ourselves towards this quilombo, not only geographically, but specially epistemologically, we perceive a lot of knowledge contained in their culture, struggle, resistance, ancestry, religiosity and spirituality, in the collective memory and also in the coming of this quilombola community. There were many impressions and emotions. Especially, our workshop with children permeated us in a very significant way. Children help us think, reflect and understand the life of a community. (Ricarte Lanz and Rosa 2020, p.113)

In this melting pot of affections, sensations, and impressions we had there, I want to reflect on the workshop held in a school class for four-year-old children and teachers from the José Néu de Carvalho, a Municipal Quilombola School. The qualitative data was collected during the first field visit in July 2019. Records were transcribed, analyzed, and categorized afterward in Germany (cf. Ricarte Lanz and Rosa 2020). The children were sitting on desks in a row as we came into the classroom. I felt the situation was very tense and very school-like. The children were curious about us; the teacher was nice and welcoming. I told them that we wanted to do some activities with them. We asked the teacher and the children if we could move the desks and chairs, so that we could be able to use the whole classroom. They were very helpful and loud. So, we moved everything to the walls and left a big space in the middle of the room in order to start our workshop. After introducing ourselves, we started singing songs we knew from Kindergarten and dancing with the children. At first, we decided which songs we were going to sing, but soon the children were singing the songs they wanted to sing and showed us some steps how they dance with their songs. Time passed by very quickly; the atmosphere was very relaxed for all of us. It was already break time. Our next planned activity for this workshop would take place after the morning meal that the children have at school on a daily basis. After the meal, during the break, they can relax, play soccer, dance, and walk around. During the break, some of the children accompanied us around the school. In the patio of the institution, we could see a vivid museum created by them and achieved through respect for the specific forms of experiencing childhood, ethnic-racial identity, and sociocultural quilombola life. There were small houses made of clay, dolls, pictures, drawings, and writings about their history and lives in this community. Their blackness was a big issue celebrated in every activity. We came back to the room after the break and gave them a “magic” paper. That is how we introduced the activity: “(…) in this magic paper, there are many hidden stories. We have to discover and find them. The best way to start is by drawing whatever you like.” The activity was to let them draw anything they wanted to. Therefore,

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we gave them white paper and colored pencils. They were very excited about it. Some started drawing on the floor; others wanted to go back to their desks. “Since you know how to write your names,” said the teacher, “you should start putting your name on the paper.” They did beautiful and colorful drawings. With the help of the teacher, we wrote, on an extra paper, all the stories to the drawings they told us. When everything was done, they helped us hang all the drawings and stories on the wall. They were very proud to see their drawings and stories posted on the wall. Some showed parents and siblings and friends the stories they have done. The drawings were indeed very colorful. Many drew about themselves playing ball or their homes or the places where they like to play. Some drew what they like to eat or to dress or the friends they like. One story made us very uncomfortable. This little girl drew many people and different spaces: at home, on the road, policeman, river, and car. The story she told was full of violence. She starts with “this is me, I am crying, because my dad is dead. My dad hit me and spanked my mom. The policeman came and took us in his car. He threw my doll in the river and I threw him in the river. I killed my dad. My dad is now dead. My mom is crying. My doll is crying (…)” were some descriptions of her drawing. When the children were gone, I asked the teacher if the father was really dead. The teacher said that she was very worried about this little girl but did not know what to do. She said to us that “the little girl is behaving weirdly in the classroom, she does not like to play with other children, she is aggressive and very shy at the same time.” She was aware that there must be a problem in the family, but she did not know what to do. I talked about it with close friends to know what to do in this case. For us, researchers, it was clear that this little girl needed help. So, we decided to schedule a meeting with the female leaders of the community since the community is well organized by women. I showed them the pictures we have taken from this case. They assured us that they would take care of this case; they would hear the family and would give support to the little girl. They would visit the family and make sure that the problem would be solved for the sake of this little girl.

5.6 Researcher’s Attitudes It is not easy for children to grow up facing multiple existential threats, racism, poverty, and discrimination among many other problems in Germany and in a quilombo community. Violence and racism, in particular, have historical roots in Germany and in Brazil as well. In both societies, independently if built on and structured by slavery or not, beliefs in the superiority of one group over another were used to justify subordination and discrimination against “inferior” groups. In most cases, discrimination and racism occur intersectionally. That means, any form of discrimination is a potential carrier for other forms of discrimination, and it is related to all forms of discrimination.

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The notion of children’s participation has been criticized for being conditioned in relation to maturity, age, and voice, therefore excluding children who are not able to participate by speaking about their experiences or opinions (cf. Clark and Richards 2017). In these two descriptions of fieldwork, we wanted to challenge research that emphasizes discursive forms of participation, understanding that children’s participation must be all-embracing and all-inclusive. In doing action research with children, we argue that the practice of knowledge production is a participatory practice. Moreover, the researcher’s embodied and sensory experience must be based on a posture of awareness and reflections and a caring attitude to other people’s practices. Moments of this kind of sensory learning are often unplanned. Researchers must be open and prepared to embrace the adversities of the fieldwork and regard them as opportunities for gaining insights into the research subject rather than as failures or obstacles. Besides, to challenge the regular bias and to develop an antibias education remain a significant goal of a pedagogical discriminating practice and inquiry for early childhood researchers and practitioners. Therefore, an antibias approach fosters positive relationships and an inclusive, welcoming environment for all members of communities. Antibias education supports children in developing a fuller understanding of themselves and the world and strengthens their sense of themselves as capable people. Children have a better chance to develop curiosity, openness to multiple perspectives, and critical thinking skills when they experience the caring and involving attitudes of practitioners and researchers. Children can also develop their ability to resist the harm of prejudice, misinformation, questionable traditions, and discrimination. These social-emotional and cognitive abilities increase the likelihood that children of all backgrounds in different societies will be able to navigate the larger worlds of school and communities more constructively with greater self-esteem. Another important discriminating attitude to be explored by researchers is some of the deeper dimensions of wonder. Many of us, as we work with young children, look to the fostering of wonder as a focus of what we do. We must look to wonder as a unifying context in children’s explorations, discoveries, imaginings, and ponderings related to the world. We want children to experience the world with their bodies as a place of wonder. We want them to carry wonder in their hearts by fostering young children’s sense of wonder in a number of ways.

5.7 Final Considerations The topic from discriminating to discrimination was approached in this chapter from a research perspective. We argue that it is possible to do research with small children even when children do not speak the same language and are not able to communicate discursively or when the cultural background is very distant from the background of the researcher. In both case studies, we approach our questions preserving a positive discriminating attitude by doing action research. In both cases, the children involved did benefit from our interactions. Even though I worked with

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case studies, I must add that it is possible to do action research with a whole community, as Paiva (2020), for example, has been doing for years. Action research has been strongly criticized in Germany (Unger et al. 2007), but I argue that this method could be especially significant for pedagogical or social work areas. New theories such as the eudaimogenetic perspective (Noack Napoles 2019, 2021) with and through its focus on the production or promotion of a good, positive life and sustainability of the subjects as well as of the social life could profit from the action research for the inquiries. In these complex and interdependent situations we are facing in the world nowadays, the pedagogical and social questions about how we understand people in educational and social contexts and how we conceive upbringing in a pedagogically appropriate way for people appear particularly significant. For pedagogical means, the images of children and adults we have developed and incorporated contain descriptive and normative ideas about how development occurs or should occur. In this complex educational awareness, pedagogical ideas about being part of mankind or being part of one world have functions of interpretation, orientation, practice, and legitimacy because they enable critical attributions, structure expectations, and legitimized educational measures. In this respect, they themselves may also help to improve the pedagogical spirit of our time.

References BAMF. Aktuelle Zahlen zu Asyl, 2017. Available from: http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/ DE/Downloads/Infothek/Statistik/Asyl/aktuelle-­z ahlen-­z u-­a syl-­d ezember-­2 017.pdf?_ blob=publicationFile. Access: 18.08.2021. BLASCHKE-NACAK, G.; THÖRNER, U. Das Entwicklungsparadigma in der Frühpädagogik. In: DIETRICH, C.; STENGER, U.; STIEVE, C. (Eds.). Theoretische Zugänge zur Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit: Eine kritische Vergewisserung. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, S., 2019. p.35–45. BLASCHKE-NACAK, G.; STENGER, U.; ZIRFAS, J. (Eds.). Pädagogische Anthropologie der Kinder: Geschichte, Kultur und Theorie. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2018. BRASIL. Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988. Diário Oficial da União, Brasília, October 05th. 1988. BRINKMANN, M.  Phänomenologie und Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit. In: DIETRICH, C.; STENGER, U.; STIEVE, C. (Eds.). Theoretische Zugänge zur Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit: Eine kritische Vergewisserung. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, S, 2019, p. 151–168. CLARK, J.  M.; RICHARDS, S.  The cherished conceits of research with children: Does seeking the agentic voice of the child through participatory methods deliver what it promises? In: CASTRO, I.; SWAUGER, M.; HARGER, B. (Eds.). Researching children and youth: Methodological issues, strategies, and innovations. Bradford: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017. (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 22). p.127–147. DRIESCHNER, E.; STAEGE, R. Konstruktivistisches Paradigma. In: DIETRICH, C.; STENGER, U.; STIEVE, C. (Eds.). Theoretische Zugänge zur Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit: Eine kritische Vergewisserung. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, S., 2019. p. 46–62. DIETRICH, C.; STENGER, U.; STIEVE, C. Theoretische Zugänge zur Pädagogik der frühen Kindheit. Eine kritische Vergewisserung. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2019. FREIRE, P. Pedagogia do Oprimido. 17. Ed. Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1987 [1968].

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FRICKE, W.  Socio-political Perspectives on Action Research. Traditions in Western Europe  – Especially in Germany and Scandinavia. International Journal of Action Research, v. 7, n. 3, p.248–261, 2011. FTHENAKIS, W.  E. Zur Neukonzeptualisierung von Bildung in der frühen Kindheit. In: FTHENAKIS, W.  E. (Eds.): Elementarpädagogik nach PISA. Freiburg: Herder, S., 2003. p. 18–37. GIL, A. C. Como elaborar projetos de pesquisa. 5. Ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2010. HONIG, M. S. Entwurf einer Theorie der Kindheit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. HONNETH, A. Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003. LEWIN, K.  Action research and minority problems. Journal of social issues, v. 2, n. 4, p.34–46, 1946. LEITE, M. J. dos SANTOS. Conceição das Crioulas: Terra, Mulher e Política, Sankofa. Revista de História da África e de Estudos da Diáspora Africana, Ano III, n. 6, p.62–88, 2010. NOACK NAPOLES, J.  Identität, Vulnerabilität und Selbstsorge  – ein eudaimogenetischer Bezugsrahmen Sozialer Arbeit. Neue Praxis, v. 4, p. 331–343, 2019. NOACK NAPOLES, J.  Soziale Arbeit nach Corona  - Skizze eines eudaimogenetischen Paradigmenwandels. In: KNIFFKI, J.; LUTZ, R.; STEINHAUSSEN, J. (Eds.). Soziale Arbeit nach Corona. Neue Perspektiven und Pfade. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juventa, S., 2021. p. 276–288. PAIVA, J. C. de. Arte/desenvolvimento. Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, 2009. PAIVA, J.  C. de. [Ed.] Partilha de Reflexões sobre as Artes, a Luta, os Saberes e os Sabores da Comunidade Quilombola de Conceição das Crioulas  - LIVRO II. Porto: edição i2ADS | Instituto de Investigação em Arte, Design e Sociedade Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto e AQCC | Associação Quilombola de Conceição das Crioulas, 2020. ISBN 987-989-9049-04-8 REASON, P.; BRADBURY, H. (Eds.). The SAGE handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. Sage, 2013. REH, S.; RICKEN, N.  Das Konzept der Adressierung. Zur Methodologie einer qualitativ-­ empirischen Erforschung von Subjektivation. In: MIETHE, I.; MÜLLER, H.-R. (Eds.). Qualitative Bildungsforschung und Bildungstheorie. Opladen und Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich, S., 2012. p. 35–56. RICARTE, L.  H.; ROSA, D.  A borboleta e o borboleto: oficina de leitura e artes na educação infantil quilombola de Conceição das Crioulas. In: PAIVA, J.  C. de [Ed.]. Partilha de Reflexões sobre as Artes, a Luta, os Saberes e os Sabores da Comunidade Quilombola de Conceição das Crioulas - LIVRO II. Porto: edição i2ADS | Instituto de Investigação em Arte, Design e Sociedade Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto e AQCC | Associação Quilombola de Conceição das Crioulas, 2020. p.113–120. SANDERS, L. Two million: Germany records largest influx of immigrants in 2015. DW-Deutsche Welle News, Germany, 21.03.2016, 2016. Available from: https://www.dw.com/en/two-­million-­ germany-­records-­largest-­influx-­of-­immigrants-­in-­2015/a-­19131436. Access: 18.08.2021. SOMEKH, B. Action Research: A Methodology for Change and Development. McGraw-Hill International, 2006. UNGER, H. von.; BLOCK, M.; WRIGHT, M. T. Aktionsforschung im deutschsprachigen Raum: zur Geschichte und Aktualität eines kontroversen Ansatzes aus Public Health Sicht. Discussion Papers / Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Forschungsschwerpunkt Arbeit, Sozialstruktur und Sozialstaat, Forschungsgruppe Public Health, Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH, v. 303, 2007. YOUNISS, J. Soziale Konstruktion und psychische Entwicklung. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1994.

Chapter 6

Preservation of Identity and Subjectivity: Philosophy, Linguistics and Social Work in Dialogue to Fight Discrimination Juliane Noack Napoles

and Patrícia Falasca

Abstract  In the articles by Prof. Dr. Christelle Dodane and Prof. Dr. Cristina Name, in this book, the authors dedicated themselves to discuss the linguistic premises and uses of discrimination in the early stages of language acquisition. In the discussed sense, to discriminate means to distinguish between two or more things and use this information as a tool to create patterns and understand/use the language that is being acquired. Things can be objects and persons but also actions and characteristics. Being able to make such distinctions is highly relevant for action. This idea serves as the starting point of this article. In the following, we will deal with the mechanism of distinction and its significance for the formation and preservation of identity. Central is thereby the aspect of how such distinctions become identity ascriptions, which can be negatively evaluated and, therefore, lead to hostility, discrimination and antagonism. We proceed this thought in four steps: First, we discuss the concepts of identity and subjectivity in a general philosophical sense to show the relevance of considerations about identity. This is followed by an examination of identity attributions, that is, threats to identity, but much more to our personhood. We will then examine how identity and subjectivity are maintained and what this has to do with language. We consider some action-leading aspects that are needed to find ways out of discrimination. Finally, as we keep discussing action-leading possibilities, we present how social work definitions as a profession and language can be put together to fight discrimination. Keywords  Identity and subjectivity · Ascriptions of identity · Language · Eudaimogenesis · Flourishing life

J. N. Napoles (*) · P. Falasca Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU), Cottbus, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_6

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6.1 Identity and Subjectivity To distinguish yellow from red berries can be life-saving if it is known that the red ones are poisonous. To communicate the fact that the red berries are poisonous can therefore save the life of an entire community. We can see that these are two different things: yellow and red berries. The situation becomes exciting when the berries are not yet ripe, that is, the red berry is still green. When still green, the later red and yellow berries are identical. When we say that two things are identical, we mean that they actually create the same reference in our minds. In this sense, mentally different phenomena can be understood as facets of one and the same thing and therefore not be discriminated but differentiated at first. This implies that we need statements and assumptions about the identity of objects because they guarantee a certain stability of the object reference of our thinking and acting. In the case of the berries, this stabilisation makes us understand that we must not eat the green berries either if we want to stay alive. The stabilising function of identity assumptions is thus central in the context of transformations that things and people experience. Changes can lead to a repositioning of the question of identity or to an adjustment of usually implicit presumptions of identity. This applies to things as well as to people. With regard to persons as well as objects, we use the same concept of identity when it comes to the fact that certain objects are still the same in view of heterogeneous appearances or actual transformations. It follows from this that the question of the identity of persons is experienced as an existential matter because it does not depend on the concept of identity but on the concept of subjectivity and that is the case precisely because we assume that we are the ones whose unity, identity and existence are at stake. In relation to subjectivity, it is about how we can understand things as persons, as opposed to objects. To understand things as persons does not only mean to understand them as beings that form their own self-understanding but also to grant them a certain right to self-determination with regard to their self-description (Renz, 2019). However, self-determination as the core of subjectivity is constantly challenged by other people’s ascriptions of identity.

6.2 Ascriptions of Identity Identity ascriptions are mechanisms through which we attribute a certain identity to other people. These are most often problematic, firstly, because they are mainly associated with statements about affiliations,1 in which group or groups the person should fit or not, and secondly, because these ascriptions are usually formulated as exclusionary procedures  – according to the motto that if you are one thing, you  For further discussion on this topic, please check the Chap. 4 by Vasconcelos and Vieira in this book. 1

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cannot be the other at the same time. Thirdly, many attempts are made to ontologise identities through historicising. Although problematic, not every identifying statement represents injustice to others. This is the case if, firstly, terms are used which people do not ascribe to themselves or which they would avoid. Secondly, we do wrong to others if we express an ascription that the person in question would agree with but not in the context in which it was made. A fundamental distinction must be made between those characteristics that can be exchanged without dissolving the identity of the person or thing in question with itself and those in which this happens. In the philosophical sense, we speak here of the difference between essential and non-essential qualities, which must be thought of by asking about the limits of the conceivability and imaginability of change and not about an image of a being behind the phenomena of things. This distinction between essential and non-essential qualities is crucial “because without it we would have to abandon either the idea of continuity of things or that of change” (Renz 2019, p. 33). In order to differentiate between these cases, discrimination is necessary, on the one hand, to accomplish such identity ascriptions at all and, on the other hand, to recognise whether they are essential or non-essential and furthermore if they are degrading identity ascriptions and beyond that essentially from the perspective of the subject, in order to be able to decide how they evaluate a particular attribution of identity. Being a person means exactly being able to determine for yourself who or what you are but also to face the task of dealing with what constitutes your identity. From that we can see why it is problematic when people are ascribed an identity that they would never attribute to themselves: it negates a prerogative we have as persons and it means that we are not treated as persons at all but as things.

6.3 Preservation of Identity and Subjectivity So far, we have discussed how identity is ascribed from the outside and that this can lead to violations of our personhood, especially when it involves ascriptions that we would not give to ourselves or those that we agree with but that happen in a context where they do not belong. We will now focus on another important perspective on the topic: how identity and subjectivity are maintained. By doing that, we change the view towards the inner perspective of the subject and towards the question of its identity formation processes. To this end, we are first considering a pedagogical concept of identity. In this, individuals are conceived as a whole, including the dimensions of their Gegebensein (givenness), Selbstseins (selfhood) and Mitseins (togetherness) with others (Noack Napoles, 2018). Givenness refers to everything that makes up the person at a given time in biological and biographical terms. Togetherness includes my involvement in social contexts, my roles, my social network and all my social relationships. My selfhood results from my individual solution of the interaction between my

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givenness in its confrontation and my togetherness. These are forms of existing and forms of being which are part of personal existence, that is, “structural instances of the person’s being” (Schneider, 2009, p. 236). These never appear for themselves alone but are related to one another, permeate one another and are mutually dependent on one another. Depending on socio-historical circumstances, the whole can only align itself in favour of a single form of being, which in the worst case can come to dominate the individual’s life, which is captured by its endangerments. In this respect, wholeness is an ideal that is constantly available because of the person’s designation as homo vulnerabilis. Identity, when characterised as wholeness, is extremely fragile, since it is constantly at issue due to events or experiences (Waldenfels, 2011) in these three dimensions. Ascriptions of identity can affect all three dimensions: describing inhabitants of a certain country as unpunctual or especially cheerful affects togetherness; describing my thinking as esoteric or my feeling as excessive affects my selfhood. Ascriptions of identity that refer to my race, my age or my sex touch my givenness. As a result, the identity crisis presents itself as a process of otherness characterised by the questioning of my wholeness, which has its starting point in one of the three dimensions. In more recent years, we can also think about the impact of the ascriptions of identity when we consider the way people tend to hurt others who do not recognise themselves as a fit in the binary (masculine/feminine) spectrum in regard to their sexuality. Not allowing or not respecting the gender identity from others hurt their givenness.2 Language, in a broad sense, mediates every human activity and is therefore active and present in the discussions about subjectivity and identity. Considering the linguistic aspect of these two concepts, we understand that both subjectivity and identity are built in and through language,3 in the social exchanges that involve the human race even before birth, in the society we live in. Subjectivity is, in this context, related to a broader sense of who we are, a somewhat stable (to a certain point) perception of self. Identity, on the other hand, is in constant change and it is also not unique: when we go through the process of learning a new language as adults, for example, we face the opportunity of building a new facet, an identity that is linked with the features, figures, cultures and specificities of the newly learned language (Falasca, 2017). This process also opens up the possibility of crisis and of non-­recognition of who we actually are, when we are linked or when we build or are placed in spheres that do not correspond to our expectations of what belongs to ourselves, to our identities and to our subjectivity.

 For a discussion on gender identity, please see the article “O filme ‘A bela do palco’ (Stage Beauty) – uma abordagem revisionista” (Lanz, H. R. & Noack Napoles, J. (2018). In: Mediapolis Revista de Comunicação, Jornalismo e Espaço Público, p. 79-91). 3  See, for further discussion on this topic, the Chaps. 3 and 7 by Del Ré and Mendonça and Vieira and Hilário, in this book. 2

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Dealing with or overcoming an identity crisis depends crucially on whether essential or non-essential characteristics are affected. Whereby it is the essential characteristics that define one’s identity as an individual. Identity and subjectivity are preserved in this sense by constantly working on our identities’ wholeness, as the balance of the three dimensions presented above. This work is a narrative and thus a linguistic process. With Paul Ricoeur, we argue that the narration constructs the identity of the figure. That may be called its narrative identity, and it is characterised by the constructing of the identity of the narrated story through the figure. It is the identity of the story that constructs the identity of the figure (Streib, 1994). Wholeness itself is the preserved identity.

6.4 Action-Leading: Overcoming Discrimination In order to act upon the idea of distancing ourselves from the actions that cause discrimination, affecting other people’s identity wholeness and therefore putting them in an identity crisis, we must consider the essential role that language plays in the maintenance of identity, as the narrative identity is formed in the language, as stated before. Language itself has a variety of layers and dimensions. It has one side, as Barthes (1992, p. 14) puts it, that compels speech and the way we must speak. This is a layer that we are most of the time unaware of but which reveals societal structures and specificities. As an example, we can consider the following two words in Brazilian Portuguese: matrimônio and patrimônio (marriage and patrimony). Matrimônio has its etymology in the Latin word mater (mother). Patrimônio, on the other hand, comes from the Latin word pater (father) (Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, 2001, p. 1870 and 2151). When we think about a society that used to be organised in a way where women would take care of the house, the kids and everything related to marriage, whereas men would be the ones earning and controlling everything that was related to the couple’s finances, the wording itself would already establish this social dynamic, whether the speakers agree with it/are consciously aware of it or not. As things have been going through changes, this social dynamic is losing its strictness. With this development, we can also see that language offers the word casamento, instead of matrimônio, which is not linked to any specific gender or societal organisation (other than the official act of marrying another person).4 In addition to that, it is also through language that society shares its views of the world. If we go back to our red and yellow berries, it is known that the red ones and the ones that are still green cannot be eaten, because it is in the narrative of our society that this should be like this. If we do it otherwise, we will die. In the same  For further discussion on Portuguese and how language, by shaping our worlds, has an impact in the society, please check Lanz and Noack Napoles “As perspectivas teóricas queer e o uso cotidiano da língua portuguesa”. In Cadernos de estudos sociais e políticos, Rio de Janeiro, vol.7, n. 12, 2017. 4

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way, we learn from an early age that we cannot call people bad names, unless we want to hurt them. In the language, a word that is used in a context is never only a word. It is a whole ideological stage. And we learn, as we acquire our first language(s), how the world around us, in the society we live, works, since “language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated –overpopulated– with the intentions of others” (Bakhtin et al., 1981, p. 293–94). This becomes especially problematic when these social dialogues and narratives assume biases that encourage discrimination in the sense of an unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age or sex. But it does not mean that there is no way out of the circle of discrimination. In fact, if “the word comes to its user already marked by its history, bearing the traces of its previous uses, which any speaker or writer must either continue, deflect, or contest” (Bakhtin et al., 1981, p.35), it is also through the word/language that this circle finds other ways of existence. But how can we actually act, in order to reorganise the meanings that are currently circulating in the chain of dialogue that our society uses in our everyday lives? One way to think about it is to consider the power of language to shape and reshape our social dynamics, and in this context, we discuss the role of the social work and linguistics in the necessary changes that must be made in order to achieve a societal structure where discriminating  – differentiating things  – is part of our everyday lives, because we need this ability in order to survive, but discrimination, hurting others, does not follow from that.

6.4.1 Overcoming Discrimination: Social Work and Language as a Way Out of the Crisis The linguistic mechanisms we described before play a fundamental role in the context of professions and professionalisation. The fact that attributions of identity hurt results from the anthropological condition of the human being since it is characterised by the fact that they are vulnerable beings, that is, vulnerable and capable of injuring. Accordingly, vulnerability is an unavoidable fact of human existence, which can make social work a necessary profession on the one hand, at the same time as it legitimises it on the other (Noack Napoles, 2019). Professions put the human being to deal with problems and crises in everyday life and are in this respect a social reaction to the anthropological constitution of humans as vulnerable beings. Professions “generally deal with psychosocial crises, biographical transitions (transitions), and with metaphysical and transcendental crises […]. They provide socio-technological help and create artifacts, they deal with the problems of social and normative integration or they educate people” (Dewe and Stüwe 2016, p. 12). And “they claim and acquire responsibility for this and develop specific knowledge about problems or crises - both about their definition and about

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their handling. It is therefore justified to critically state in this context that it is also only through professions that life-world conditions are defined as a crisis. In other words: professions not only deal with crises and problem situations, they also generate them” (Dewe and Stüwe 2016, p.  12). Accordingly, ascriptions of identity constitute professions and justify the necessity of their existence: the attribution of “being ill” calls the medical professions into action; “being a criminal”, the legal system; and “being unemployed”, the social work. If professions are based on attributions formulated in this way, one speaks of a sociopathogenetic orientation. For the discipline and profession of social work, this will be explained in more detail below.5 In the theoretical mainstream of social work (Mühlum, 1994), the determination of the subject area of the discipline oscillates around the field of meaning of social problems. Staub-Bernasconi (1995) postulates: “The subject or better: the part of reality to be considered by social work are social problems” (p. 105). Classic in this sense is the definition: “The object of social work is the processing of socially and professionally relevant problems” (Wirth, 2015, p. 51). Or that the “general function for solving social problems” (Lüssi, 1995, p.  120) constitutes the unifying basic understanding of social work as an independent discipline. The trouble with social problems is that they are “(1) constructions, definitions, observations; they are not simply given, but are made to be so and can be (2) understood as disappointments of expectations, whereby (3) the disappointments are attributed to an expectation of a decision, which does not simply happen, but is wanted and thereby as Action of another system reference is experienced” (Hellmann 1994, quoted in Wirth 2015, p. 102). Determining social problems as an object of social work represents a certain perspective that is the result of a selective-interpretative performative practice (Schmidt 2016), that is, “the perception in the respective field of action conditions and determines the respective field” (ibid., p. 15). The social work perspective is aimed at social problems and conflicts and their causes and dangers that need to be avoided or combated and is consequently characterised by a sociopathogenetic perspective. A sociopathogenetic view is directed at the emergence, development and avoidance of social or socially produced suffering in its relation to social normality (cf. Noack Napoles 2019, 2020). This paradigm and the associated object definition of social work with the epicentre “social problems” began to become fragile some time ago. In 1992, for example, the German Society for Social Work formulated the subject of social work as “the theory and practice of flourishing and less flourishing life and the everyday existence of individuals, families and social groups as well as their coexistence in our society under the given and changeable economic, political, cultural and communicative conditions” (Haupert 1996, quoted by Wahl 2002, p. 8). Their “diffuse [...] overall responsibility for ‘social problems’” (Bommes and Scherr 1996, p. 107) was criticised, and it was argued that the formula “social work deals

 For the whole argumentation on this topic, see Noack Napoles (2021).

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with social problems” “represents a theoretically unconvincing understanding of the Reference problem that social work suggests” (Scherr 2002, p. 35). The formula “social work deals with social problems” thus shows the weakness of social work, and “then [it] primarily appears as an instance of normalisation of ‘society’” (ibid.). According to this, the sociopathogenetic paradigm “the joint design of a new, sustainable, social world” is not immediately obvious, as it requires certain beliefs, expectations, knowledge and methods that differ from those used to avoid and combat social problems. In order to find ways of action towards the fight against discrimination, which is also a social problem, a change of perspective is needed. It should theoretically underpin the joint design of a new, sustainable, social world and the formulation of a corresponding subject area of social work as a discipline. Considering this perspective, we suggest that eudaimogenesis can offer such a change of perspective. Eudaimogenesis is a paradigmatic perspective characterised by its focus on creating sustainability and good living. The proposed eudaimogenetic turn in social work therefore leads to a focus on the creation and preservation of flourishing life, which programmatically can be pointed out as follows: “Away from the administration, prevention and solution of social problems and conflicts towards the creation of flourishing life and the necessary social and individual conditions” (Noack Napoles 2020, p. 189). In a conceptual perspective, eudaimogenesis is an artificial word composed of the ancient Greek eudaimonía – meaning happiness, objective well-being or good success – and the Greek genesis, which can be translated as origin, creation or production. However, the concept of happiness used here is less about the subjective evaluation of an affective state and more about the “objectively’” desirable realisation of the human experience potential: “A happy life is [...] one in which the most important wishes are fulfilled, life is good [...] for those people who lead a ‘more or less happy and flourishing life’” (Wyrobnik 2014, p. 18). And life is flourishing if it is led in a self-determined manner in both good and bad times (ibid.).6 The eudaimogenetic paradigm is based on the so-called eudaimonistic axiom, according to which human beings – in the sense mentioned above – want and can be happy and, on the other hand, on the basic anthropological assumption of humans as vulnerable beings capable of being injured. A eudaimogenetic perspective opposes paternalistic foreign attributions of groups as problem groups simply because they do not conform to prevailing norms. A science of social work oriented in this way deals with the interpretation and the systematic conceptual penetration of what flourishing life can be or at least should be in the field of tension between the individual and society. It develops theories, concepts and methods for its creation, maintenance and research. This change of perspective (from the focus on the social problem to the focus on a flourishing life) is permeated by language and can happen in and via language. When considered in the structural linguistic approach, a word is just a word, and it

 For more on this topic, see the Chap. 5 by Lanz in this book.

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gains its value in the language structure, when compared or placed with other words (Saussure 1959). This functioning changes completely when the word is considered as a living item; every time it is used in discourse – in real life, as stated before, a word is never just a word, since it gets soaked with the meanings and hierarchies that are found in the real world and in the society where this word is used. The word is a stage where symbolic fighting happens (Bakhtin et al. 1981). When this aspect of language and discourse is considered and understood, the way language is used in the context of social work matters (and in every other profession, in every other human relationship7). The way discourse is shaped and the way people are handled in and through dialogue can make the shift between the focus on the social problem and the focus on a flourishing and meaningful life. It is the shift between discrimination/discriminatory acts that hurt people and recognising the differences without opposing or hierarchising one over the other. In this sense, identity and subjectivity wholeness is maintained. This might seem a philosophical change that by no means – or only in a very long time – can impact the lives of the subjects. But this is not necessarily the truth. One clear and recent event in which this change can be observed is in the use of the word queer. Originally, this word meant, in English, weird, odd, unconventional, suspicious and eccentric. In a highly offensive way, the word queer started being used to hurt people that did not fall into the binary sexual division (man/woman). So, at first, this word was used in societal discourse as a means of discrimination and ascribing those people the identity of being odd and not belonging. However, in the end of the 1980s, the group of people called queer in an offensive way, started to proudly use this same word to describe themselves and to show, other than a deviation of the norm, a strong bond between them – the belonging and identification to a group. Nowadays, the word queer has gained space, not only by giving those people a place in society but also by positioning the discussions on gender identity in many difference instances, including the academic one (Lanz and Noack Napoles 2017). Language in use is this powerful. Identity and identification are this powerful. Understanding this power and working towards change considering this power may not make the change happen overnight, but it can be faster than we can imagine and it is essential that we understand and put it into action.

 See, for example, the discussion on the linguistic environment of children and the impacts on their lives and subjectivity in the last section of the Chap. 3 by Del Ré and Mendonça, in this book. 7

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6.5 Final Considerations Differentiating, as we could see, is an important ability we have to develop since the very beginning of life: be it to discriminate sounds in order to acquire our first language(s) or to be able to distinguish between the poisonous and life-threatening red berries and the delicious yellow ones. As human beings, we tend to overuse the discrimination (differentiation) process and start hurting people, messing with their identities, by ascribing them differentiations and identities that do not belong to them and are not where they see themselves at – or at least not instantly. From discriminating, this natural and important ability, we end up on the discrimination path, and therefore, we segregate, hurt and prevent others from being able to live a flourishing life. Identity and subjectivity are important concepts to the human being, and the sense of wholeness that comes from their stabilisation and maintenance is a way to put the subject out of a crisis where these concepts are challenged and put to the question. As we have discussed in this chapter, language, as a symbolic force that builds identity and subjectivity themselves, together with tools that emerge from professions and professionalisation and the understanding of a field of work such as social work, can signal a way (or even some ways) out of the crisis, by shifting the focus from social problem and discrimination to ways of accomplishing a relevant, fulfilling and flourishing life. By the discussions carried out throughout this chapter, we have shown one way, among many other possible ways, to look at the issues that somehow link the concepts of discriminating, discrimination, language, identity and subjectivity together.

References BARTHES, R. Aula. Tradução de Leyla Perrone-Moisés. São Paulo: Cultrix, 1992 BAKHTIN, M.; HOLQUIST, M.; EMERSON, C. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press, p. 293–94, 1981. BOMMES, M.; SCHERR, A.  Exklusionsvermeidung, Inklusionsvermittlung und/oder Exklusionsverwaltung. Zur gesellschaftstheoretischen Bestimmung Sozialer Arbeit. In: Neue Praxis, v. 2, n. 96, p. 107–123, 1996. DENTITH, S. Bakhtinian thought: an introductory reader. New York: Routledge, 1995. DEWE, B.; STÜWE, G. Basiswissen Profession. Zur Aktualität und kritischen Substanz des Professionalisierungskonzepts für die Soziale Arbeit. In memoriam Wilfried Ferchhoff. Weinheim, Basel: Beltz Verlag, 2016. DICIONÁRIO HOUAISS DA LÍNGUA PORTUGUESA. Rio de. Janeiro, Ed. Objetiva, 2001. FALASCA, P. “Eu disse tudo isso em alemão, mas em português penso totalmente diferente”: Identidade e argumentação na sala de aula de língua estrangeira. [thesis] Unesp - Araraquara, São Paulo, 2017. LANZ H. R.; NOACK NAPOLES, J. “As perspectivas teóricas queer e o uso cotidiano da língua portuguesa”. In: Cadernos de estudos sociais e políticos, Rio de Janeiro, v.7, n. 12, 2017.

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LÜSSI, P. Systemische Sozialarbeit. Praktisches Lehrbuch der Sozialberatung. 3. Ed. Bern/ Stuttgart/Wien: Haupt Verlag, 1995. MÜHLUM, A.  Zur Notwendigkeit und Programmatik einer Sozialarbeitswissenschaft. In: WENDT, W.  R. (Hrsg.). Sozial und wissenschaftlich arbeiten. Freiburg im Breisgau., 1994. p. 41–74. NOACK NAPOLES, J.  Soziale Arbeit nach Corona  - Skizze eines eudaimogenetischen Paradigmenwandels”. In: KNIFFKI, J.; LUTZ, R.; STEINHAUßEN, J. (Hrsg.). Soziale Arbeit nach Corona. Neue Perspektiven und Pfade. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juventa, 2021. p. 276-288. NOACK NAPOLES, J.  Sozialpädagogik eudaimogenetisch denken. In: BIRGMEIER, B.; MÜHREL, E.; WINKLER, M. (Hrsg.). Sozialpädagogische SeitenSprünge. Einsichten von außen, Aussichten von innen: Befunde und Visionen zur Sozialpädagogik. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juventa, 2020. p. 186–190. Noack Napoles, J. Identität, Vulnerabilität und Selbstsorge – ein eudaimogenetischer Bezugsrahmen Sozialer Arbeit. In: Neue Praxis 04/2019, p. 331–343, 2019. NOACK NAPOLES, J.  Identität. In: GÜNTER, G.; ZIRFAS, J. (Hrsg.). Lebenskunst. Positionierungen der Human-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, 2018. p. 38–45. RENZ, U. Was denn bitte ist kulturelle Identität? Eine Orientierung in Zeiten des Populismus. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2019. SAUSURRE, F. Course in General Linguistics. Philosophical Library: New York, 1959. SCHERR, A.  Soziale Probleme, Soziale Arbeit und menschliche Würde. In: SOZIALEX- TRA 06/2002, p. 35–39, 2002. SCHMIDT, F. Pädagogische Wahrnehmbarkeitsräume. Historisch-anthropologische Annäherung an die Verfasstheit pädagogischer Blicke. In: SCHMIDT, F.; SCHULZ, M.; GRAß- HOFF, G. (Hrsg.). Pädagogische Blicke. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juventa, 2016. p. 54–71. SCHNEIDER, W. Gedanken zur Pädagogik 1 - Besinnungen, Herausforderungen, Provokationen. Oldenburg: Paulo Freire Verlag, 2009. STAUB-BERNASCONI, S. Systemtheorie, soziale Probleme und Soziale Arbeit: lokal, national, international. Bern/Stuttgart/Wien: Haupt Verlag, 1995. STREIB, H.  Erzählte Zeit als Ermöglichung von Identität: Paul Ricoeurs Begriff der narrativen Identität und seine Implikationen für die religionspädagogische Rede von Identität und Bildung. In: DIETER, G.; HANS-GÜNTER, H. (Eds.). Religion und Gestaltung der Zeit, p. 181-198. Kampen: Kok, 1994. WAHL, W.  Gelingendes Leben als Leitperspektive Sozialer Arbeit? Ein Beitrag zur sozialarabeitswissenschaftlichen Theoriebildung, 2002. Available from: http://www.webnetwork-­ nordwest.de/ dokumente/gelingen.PDF. Access: 10/10/2020. WALDENFELS, B. Aufmerken auf das Fremde, Online, 2011. Available from: https://philosophie-­ indebate.de/2246/ schwerpunktbeitrag-aufmerken-auf-das-fremde], Access: 10/10/2020. WIRTH, J.  V. Die Lebensführung der Gesellschaft. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2015. WYROBNIK, I. “Aus „Hans im Glück“ lernen? Oder: Zur Bedeutung von Glück im Er- wachsenenalter”. In: Erwachsenenbildung. v. 60, n. 2, p. 17–19, 2014.

Chapter 7

A Reflexion About the Historical Course of the Brazilian Sign Language: School, Official Documents and Fighting Discrimination Alessandra Jacqueline Vieira and Rosângela Nogarini Hilário

Abstract  This article focuses on reflecting on the use of Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) in different social situations and spheres of activity, such as schools, problematizing situations of discrimination that, historically, deaf people experience. LIBRAS is a visuospatial language, used by members of the deaf community in Brazil and which, despite having been recognized by Law 10.436 (Brazil) in 2002, after intense struggles by the deaf community, is still socially discredited, not always accessible to this community in all social spaces. If we assume that it is in and through the language we are constituted – and language is portrayed here as a vehicle of ideological meanings, whose senses are historically and socially constructed, from the interaction between persons and between discourses (Bakhtin 2016) – when an individual is deprived of the use of their language, there is also an impediment to developing their language skills, also impacting their experiences and their development in different aspects. Although there is an indication and some advances in the inclusion of LIBRAS in different environments, especially after Law Decree No. 5.626 (Brazil), many social spheres of human activity, such as the school, still exclude the deaf subject, because they do not provide accessibility in sign language. In this sense, to reflect on the questions we propose here, we will discuss how, in the course of history, some official documents in Brazil, such as the new LDB (Law of Directives and Bases) (approved in 2021) and the BNCC (National Common Curricular Base), have been incorporating issues related to this theme, and moreover, from reports of some deaf people on social networks (like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook), we intend to reflect on how this history of struggle and changes in legislation have allowed changes in the social conception of A. J. Vieira (*) Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] R. N. Hilário São Paulo State University (UNESP), Araraquara, State of São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_7

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the identity of deaf individuals and possible social transformations from the use of this language by the deaf community in Brazil. Keywords  Brazilian sign language · School · Official documents

7.1 Introduction This article has the aim to reflect about the use of the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) in different social situations and spheres of activities, especially at schools, problematizing this question from a historical (through laws, decrees, etc.) and a social (through reports from some deaf people about the language use) point of view. For this, a reflection will be made about the importance of language acquisition and the sign language usage by deaf children, mainly in the school environment; some official documents will be brought such as laws and decrees, discussing especially the ones which are referred to education of/for deaf people; and finally, it will be addressed reports from some deaf people in the social media (such as You Tube, Instagram and Facebook) which portray a bit of their educational process and the discrimination faced by the use (or privation) of the Brazilian Sign Language. Listening to the deaf, who are the protagonists of this story, is fundamental as they live and experience the situations reported here. We intend to think about how this history of fights and the changes in law have been permitting modifications in the social conception about the identity of deaf people and the possible social transformations from the use of this language by the deaf community in Brazil. We start with the assumption that it is in and through the language that the individuals constitute themselves socially, from the interaction with other individuals and discourses (Bakhtin 2016; Volochínov 2018). In this way, whenever a person is deprived of the language usage, there is also the impediment to develop their language abilities, also impacting on their experiences and their development in several aspects. LIBRAS is a visuospatial language used by members from the deaf community in Brazil, in which, although being recognized by Law No. 10436 in 2002, after intense fighting from the deaf community, it is not in all social spaces and it is not recognized as an official language in the country, which means that it is not always available to the deaf community and, moreover, it is not taught in regular schools. Even though there is the indication of usage and some advances in the inclusion of LIBRAS in different social spheres of human activity (in laws and decrees, for example), numerous of these environments, even regular schools, still exclude the deaf person, as they do not provide accessibility to the sign language. The privation of the first language causes impact in the interaction, in the cognitive development and in learning, and it can occur with deaf students who do not have access to knowledge through their natural language. According to Cruz, Finger and Fontes (2017), close to 90% of deaf children in Brazil came from hearing homes. It means that the biggest part of these children acquire the sign language at school or during

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the education process. Quadros (1997) claims that in many cases, it is in the school that the deaf child has the first contact with the sign language. Therefore, it is believed to be vital a reflection about the language acquisition process, specifically about the importance of sign language acquisition by deaf children, problematizing this question in the school settings and in laws, resuming the historical course and reflecting about this scenario today.

7.2 LIBRAS and the Language Acquisition 7.2.1 LIBRAS: Which Language Is It? What Is Its Importance? LIBRAS is a natural language and visuospatial and, as the other sign languages, “share a series of characteristics which attributes a specific character and distinguish them from the other communication systems”1 (Quadros and Karnopp 2004, p.30). It is a language used by the deaf community almost everywhere in Brazil, although there are some regional differences and linguistic variation, it is a natural and true language. According to Quadros and Karnopp (2004, p.31), at first, to defend that the sign language was a true language, it was necessary to show the characteristics to prove this fact: He [Stoke (1960/1978)] was the first, thus, to look for a structure, to analyse the signs, to dissect them and to search for their constitutive parts. He proved, initially that each sign presented at least three independent parts (in analogy to the phonemes of speech)  – the localization, the hands configuration and the movement – and that each part had a limited number of combinations.

It is, therefore, a language whose characteristics are similar to the oral languages, as it has versatility and flexibility, arbitrariness, creativity/productivity, etc. (Harrison 2014, p.32). Quadros (1997, p.46), resuming Karnopp’s works, discusses different characteristics of the sign language, also specifying some inadequate myths, besides arguing about synthetic aspects. In the same form, the authors write about the linguistic aspects of the Brazilian Sign Language, outlining its phonological, morphological and syntactic characteristics. In addition to thinking about the grammatical parameters of the LIBRAS, it is necessary to consider the language importance to deaf people, who bring their experiences, their knowledge, their ideology, etc. As Moura (2014, p.14) states, we should ponder that the sign language is the first language to the deaf “the one [he] should have access to constitute himself in the world. We consider that the sign language (LIBRAS, in Brazil) is the way, par excellence, through which the deaf child can acquire language in a natural form and which permits a whole and  All the quotes from the Portuguese original were translated to English by us.

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limitless development”. It is believed, thus, that the sign language must be present in the children’s lives since they are born, allowing their complete development.

7.2.2 Language, Discourse and Language Acquisition When stated that it is in and through the language that the individuals’ constitution happens, it is necessary to review the conceptions of language and discourse to argue about the accessibility of the sign language to the deaf. In this text, our principles are based on the discursive-dialogic theory from Bakhtin which proposes that the language is a product of interaction, which is dialogic, par excellence. The language, according to Bakhtin, Voloshinov and Medvedev, members of the Bakhtinian Circle, is a “vehicle of ideological meaning” (2016), constructed historically and socially. In accordance to Faraco (2009), based on Bakhtin’s ideas, the language is a set of utterances, sited and concrete, unique and unrepeatable. The Bakhtinian’s reflexions have been the basis of our reflexions about language acquisition (Del Ré et al. 2014a, b, 2021), which enlarges, obviously, the LIBRAS acquisition or the bilingual acquisition LIBRAS-Portuguese. The language is part of the individual: it is in it and through it that we access the world, the culture and the other. It is the mother language that allows us to access the meanings, which are socially constructed; these meanings, always ideological, as constituted by value, allow a movement of approximation and detachment in relation to the discourses. Therefore, we are constituted as individuals while we are inserted in spheres of activity, starting with the family, school and other spheres in which we enter during our lives. In those spaces, discourses transit, utterances that are organized depending on the individuals involved, on the relation between these individuals, the values socially attributed to them and their sayings. Entering the language is, thus, entering the world of meanings, which is always in movement: it is to be meant by the language and in that created meaning. If it happens in the context of hearing children, it is not different in the context of deaf children: they are also inserted in our society, which means they attribute value to discourses, approximating or detaching, that is, they are constituted as individuals in and through the language. For this reason, it is very important that they have access to the language, if possible, since they are born, so they are able to create meaning. The insertion of LIBRAS in different spaces in the last years made it possible to the language to have a further social impact, reaching different discursive genres and allowing the active inclusion of deaf people in different social spheres. It results in the fact that the deaf community became more recognized. Perlin (1998 n/p), when dealing with different deaf identities, affirms that the alterity in relation to other deaf people and the interaction in different community spaces with other deaf people make it possible to build their identity: If all the cultural identity has a history, the process of history of the deaf community has been modelled while the deaf identity has been modelled. The encounter with the alterity is the specific sign to the constitution of different identities. In the deaf community, this

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encounter with the alterity becomes a constant necessity. In the deaf culture, alterity has been constituted, among other aspects, from the identity constitution. (Perlin 1998, n/d)

As the language is alive, dynamic and heterogeneous, it is through the relations between individuals and discourses that the language changes and is transformed, and these alterations constitute us as individuals who belong to a specific community. The language carries the nuances, the culture and the social-ideological constituted meanings of our society. It can be verified with the Brazilian Sign Language, which carries features of our culture and ideology. Thus, it is emphasized that having early access to the sign language is crucial. Karnopp (1999, 2011, 2013a) also defends the importance of the sign language acquisition from birth. Similar to the hearing children, the deaf children can develop entirely if they are exposed to their mother language. To the author, Deaf children, exposed to the sign language, acquire this language in the same way as hearing children spontaneously acquire an oral language. Therefore, deaf children acquire the sign language which surrounds them without any special instruction. They start to produce signs in the same age as hearing children start to speak and they go through similar linguist development stages. (Karnopp 2011, p. 283)

Seen in this term, the author emphasizes that as the sign language is a visuospatial language, different from the oral-hearing language, the language addressed to the deaf children has characteristics that are highlighted, such as the visual input; the visual contact among the interlocutors, that is, the deaf baby fixed look to the mother/father and vice versa; the use of facial expressions more outlined; and the production of a complex manual babbling and social gestures, which are essential in this process (Karnopp 2011). If the language is fundamental to knowledge acquisition, as it was mentioned before, being deprived of a mother language can bring consequences to the language development. Obviously, acquiring a language is not only learning forms of this language, but also being surrounded by different discourses, participating in different spheres of activity, in different social spaces. And this does not always happen with the deaf because of lack of accessibility or due to language deprivation. According to Cruz, Finger and Fontes (2017), the late language acquisition can cause linguistic-cognitive impacts. In a study related to the sign language acquisition by implanted deaf children and with CODAs (child of deaf adults),2 the authors discuss the importance of the sign language, especially to the deaf children, as they can have difficulties to learn an oral language even with the cochlear implant, as it is necessary a clinic work and the acquisition is not always natural. Thus, having access to the sign language, with the oral language acquisition, is beneficial to the deaf children’s development, also for those who use the cochlear implant. Karnopp (2013b), in one of her works, argues about the importance of culture, emphasizing that the sign language is fundamental to the linguistic development and to the deaf children’s social insertion. In the text, the author defends the importance of the social relations employed by the deaf individuals in the sign language,  Children of deaf adults – hearing child whose parents are deaf

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their natural language, whose acquisition is not only attached to the language forms but mainly to the culture and its social values. When they participate with their pairs of different spheres of activity, the deaf children start to recognize, act and position themselves in the world. This idea is supported by Moura, who claims that […] it is only in the social interaction that the aspects of group life are taken into consideration and new inclusions are constituted, and therefore each one can notice themselves as a member of a specific cultural group […]. People are not born knowing their cultural values, as the culture is not something intrinsic to be carried out, but it is the positioning product and forms to be in the world. The social space makes this interaction possible in a way that the values can be introjected and become the basis to the individual positioning in society. (2014, p.23)

For this author, it is usually at school that the social and cultural values are transmitted to the deaf children, different from the hearing children, who have access since they are born, as they share the same language with their peers. Quadros (1997), in her book Education of the Deaf: the language acquisition,3 discusses different aspects of the language acquisition process and shows her position about the importance of bilingualism to deaf children. The author states a proposal to deaf education in Brazil, reviewing the whole educational historical path of the deaf, with critics about the methods already employed, such as the oralism. She problematizes this issue, defending the proposal of an education that can respect the language used by the deaf community, in this case, the LIBRAS, and moreover defining the characteristics to the teacher’s formation in a bilingual school. In accordance to this proposal, the contents (which curriculum is the same from schools to hearing people) are worked in the child’s native language (in this case, the LIBRAS), and Portuguese is taught in its written modality (Quadros 1997, p.32). To delineate these characteristics, the author sums up the following objectives: (a) Create an appropriate linguistic environment to the children’s particular forms of cognitive and linguistic processing. (b) Assure the social-emotional development [entirely to deaf children with the identification with deaf adults]. (c) Guarantee the possibility to the child to build a theory of the world. (d) Provide the complete access to the curricular and cultural information. (Quadros 1997, p.33). It is important to highlight, thus, that different from the perspectives which place the bilingualism as something negative, in this approach, the positive aspects and the benefits are emphasized, showing the importance of the bilingualism to deaf people to develop their oral abilities (in LIBRAS) and written abilities (Portuguese). We can find many statements of deaf people which report how language privation has impacted and influenced their knowledge acquisition process. Many of these reports reveal the discovery of the world, the knowledge acquisition, just after

 Original title: Educação de Surdos: a aquisição da linguagem

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having access to the sign language. It is possible to highlight that if we are constituted in and through the language, it is essential to have access to a language, and in the case of deaf children, having the sign language since they are born is essential to their insertion in society with their language maturity. It is emphasized that the sign language is a natural language to the deaf, and its privation/restraint leads to, historically, setbacks and impacted the life of several deaf people, especially in the scholar context. Some of these reports will be dealt with in this article.

7.3 Brief Summary of the Deaf People’s History in Brazil: Laws, Fights and Educational Documents For the considerations here proposed, it is crucial to review, briefly, the official documents that help to revisit the history of deaf people in Brazil.4 The recognition of the LIBRAS and the importance of the language to deaf people has a recent past in the country. For a long time in Brazil (1880–1960/1970), the sign language was not taught, and it was inhibited in some social spheres, as a reaction of a movement started in Europe, which had the intention to strengthen the nation through the language (in that case, French). In accordance to Lodi (2005, p.  416), “the French republican political ideology preached about the necessity of French unification to have a cultural homogeneity”, with the erasure of the sign language, this movement spread and arrived in the USA and in Brazil: Thus, during almost a century (1880 – 1960), the dominant discourse about deafness was centred in stifling, diminishing, mischaracterising the differences, elevating and emphasizing what was absent in the deaf in accordance with the hearing model (hearing, speech, language), determining the development of clinical and practical pedagogic approach which searched the erasure of deafness through a trial to restore the hearing ability through the usage of devices to sound amplification and take the deaf to develop oral language using mechanic and decontextualizing techniques of articulatory training. (Lodi 2005, p. 416)

It results in the fact that several deaf people went to regular or special schools without the possibility to use the sign language, a circumstance that, as it was mentioned before, impacted the language acquisition process of many deaf people. According to Skliar (1998), deaf people in Brazil were, for a long time, recognized as incomplete people, abnormal and inferior; it means the reference to the deaf community was always negative. This scenario lasted for a long time, which harmed the deaf, as the oral Portuguese is not naturally acquired by them, resulting in loss and social exclusion to these individuals. This scenario has been modified after intense fights of the deaf community and representative entities which resulted in some laws and decrees which will be brought into debate.

 As our proposal is to focus on the LIBRAS use and the importance of this language, especially at school, we will not address all the historical aspects in this revisit. For a brief contextualization, see Streiechen (2017) and Lodi (2005). 4

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The Brazilian Sign Language was recognized in Brazil only in 2002 with Law No. 10.4365 on April 24, 2002. This law “Stipulates about the Brazilian Sign Language and offers other providences. In this law, it is determined the question of accessibility of deaf people through the Sign Language”. In its Art. 4, it determines that The federal educational system and the state educational system, municipal and from the Federal District should guarantee the inclusion of the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) in the degrees of Special Education, Phonoaudiology and Teaching in both secondary and high education level, as an integral part of the National Curricular Parameters (PCNs) in accordance to the current legislation. Sole Paragraph. The Brazilian Sign Language  – LIBRAS cannot substitute the Portuguese written modality. (Brasil 2002, our emphasis)

In 2002, Law No. 10.098 from December 19, 2000, “stablishes general rules and basic criteria to the promotion of accessibility of disabled people and people with reduced mobility and offers other providences”. This law, in its Art. 18, claims The Public Power will implement the formation of professional interpreters of Braille writing, sign language and interpreter-guides in order to facilitate any kind of direct communication with the person with sensory incapacity and with communication difficulties. (BRASI 2000)

Although the law determines that the deaf person must have accessibility in different spaces, it is only with Decree No. 5.626 from December 22, 2005, that specific guidelines are provided. This decree “regulates Law no. 10.436 from April 24th, 2002, which addresses the Brazilian Language Sign – BLS, and the art. 18 from Law no. 10.098, from December 19th, 2000”, with specific attributions. Therefore, the decree is about the LIBRAS inclusion as a curricular discipline, determining that Art. 3rd The LIBRAS must be inserted as a mandatory curricular discipline in courses to form professionals to the teaching work, both in secondary and higher education levels and in the courses of Phonoaudiology in teaching institutions, public and private from the federal educational system and from the state educational systems, from the Federal District and Municipal educational system. (Brasil, 2005)

Moreover, the decree treats about the formation of the LIBRAS teacher and instructor, the LIBRAS and Portuguese use and dissemination for deaf people to have access to education, for the formation of translators and interpreters of LIBRAS-­ Portuguese, for the guarantee to deaf people and people with hearing disability to the right of education and for the role of public power and of companies which hold the concession or permission for public services, supporting the use and dissemination of the LIBRAS (Brasil 2005). Therefore, the access of deaf people to different social spaces is regulated, especially in basic and higher education - which was better regulated in 2013 (Brasil 2013) -, and moreover, it is guaranteed that the LIBRAS is used by the deaf community.

 It is important to emphasize that due to the limitations of this article, we will discuss only some laws and decrees. There are a lot of important documents which report the history of the deaf in Brazil. 5

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One of the fundamental changes, which occurred in 2021, was the alteration of the Law of Directives and Bases (LDB) of 2021.6 Law No. 14.191/2021 from August 3, 2021, “alters the Law no. 9.394 from December 20th, 1996 (Law of Directives and Bases of National Education) in order to argue about the modality of bilingual and deaf education” (Brasil 2021). In this law, it is defined, for instance, what is understood by bilingual education for the deaf: Art. 60th – A. It is understood, for the purpose of this law, as Bilingual Education for the Deaf, the modality of scholar education offered in the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS), as the first language and written Portuguese as the second language in bilingual schools for the deaf, in bilingual classrooms for the deaf, regular schools or in centres of education for the deaf, for deaf students, for deaf-blind, with hearing impairment, deaf with high abilities or gifted or with any other associated disability, who chooses the modality of bilingual education for the deaf.

From the current LDB, it is intended to regulate efficiently the offer of bilingual education for the deaf, which initiates in early childhood education and carries on during life (according to Art. 60 – A § 2nd from the current LDB). Additionally, the Law of Directives and Bases establishes that the bilingual teaching is a right for the deaf, regulating the teacher’s work, who are part of this area, proposing inducement and didactic materials for the formation of attending students, besides registering a broader dialogue with the institutions that represent the deaf community (deaf-blind and high-ability individuals). Art. 60th – B. In addition to the provisions from the art. 59th of this Law, the teaching systems will ensure didactic material and bilingual teachers with appropriate formation and specialization in higher level of education to the deaf students, deaf-blind, with hearing impairment, deaf with high abilities or gifted or with any other associated disability. Sole Paragraph. In the hiring processes and periodic assessment from teachers, to which this article’s caput refers, the entities which represent the deaf people will be heard. (Brasil 2021)

All these laws are fundamental to reflect about the situation of the deaf people’s education in Brazil. The alterations made have been, so far, the result of intense debates and the deaf community fight, with the representative institutions, researchers, political representatives, etc. Even with the law implementation, there is still a long course to make the accessibility – a right of deaf people – effectively respected, without discrimination. This reality is reported by several deaf people, as can be seen in the following section of this article.

 See https://www.in.gov.br/en/web/dou/-/lei-n-14.191-de-3-de-agosto-de-2021-336083749

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7.4 Deaf People’s Reports: Reflections About the Deaf Identity, the Advances in Education and the Fight Against Discrimination As it was mentioned before, there is still a long path to improve the deaf community’s access to different interaction spaces. There are several moving reports in the social media about how the access to the LIBRAS made the deaf realize the world in a different way, with the usage of this language. Many of them only had contact with this language when they were adults, when started to relate to the deaf community. This encounter with the sign language made many deaf people realize their deaf identity – which is fundamental to their development. Although the official documents determine the accessibility, there are several barriers to be removed. One of them is the lack of accessibility in schools. Many deaf people report being inserted in classrooms without interpreters or with interpreters without adequate formation. This obviously impacted the formation of these deaf people, who were submitted to vexatious situations of exclusion in this environment. Quadros (1997, 2015) and Lodi et al. (2015a), for example, defend the importance of children to be taught in their first language, which is not always the case, especially in farther or poorer regions where there is no accessibility. There is still a huge lack of information about deafness and about the deaf community, a fact that could be minimized with the insertion of LIBRAS teaching in schools. Unfortunately, although recognized, the sign language is not recognized as an official language in the country. This fact ends up limiting the deaf participation in some spaces which are not public, as, in many of these environments, there is no accessibility for them. With more information about the deaf community, about the LIBRAS and about deafness, the prejudice against the deaf people and hearing-­ impaired7 people would be reduced. The discrimination of the deaf, as it was said before, is still very present in our society. Discourses about the oral language imposition, capability, exclusion reports, lack of accessibility, language privation, prejudiced social labels, etc. are still recurrent. In different spheres of activity, there are reports from the deaf and deaf families who still suffer with all these issues. Some of these reports are easily seen in the social media, whose stories, unique and singular, met in the line of prejudice. We intend to approach only a few of these reports, illustrating as an example of the deaf identity, the scholar course and the sign language acquisition, as well as the experienced prejudice. One of these reports is from Tainá, who has a YouTube channel named Visurdo,8 together with her brother, who is also deaf. In several moments, Tainá and her brother, Andrei, report different situations experienced by them, including the prejudice situations. In many videos, the young siblings argue about the deaf reality and  Hearing-impaired people are considered to be the ones who have a soft or moderate loss of the hearing ability. 8  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYHZ8ghF1p0ev8i6TWcmiYg 7

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the difficulties of being deaf in the country. Although the family is very united and all of them communicate through the sign language, in one of the videos, Tainá claims that she has already suffered prejudice and describes some prejudiced comments and questions (especially related to the deaf community9), such as “you don’t look like deaf as you are beautiful”, “you don’t seem to be deaf because you can read and write”, “can you drive?”, “can you go to university?”, etc. These questions show that, even today, although there have been advances, there is still a lot of ignorance about deafness and deaf identity. Another report that calls the attention is from a deaf young person called Gabriel, whose YouTube channel is named Isflocos.10 In one of his videos, Gabriel defends the accessibility and the right to bilingual education for the deaf. In a specific video,11 the author discusses about the teaching of deaf children. For this, he exposes in another video which has circulated in the social medias at the time, a teacher teaching a deaf child shouting with angry facial expressions, showing impatience and irritability (the video shows, for example, the teacher erasing crustily the child’s notebook and spelling some letters from the alphabet, in Portuguese). Unfortunately, that is the reality of many deaf children who are inserted in learning institutions whose structure (physical and professional formation) is not prepared to receive these children. What the young YouTuber argues is that the deaf children must have access to a bilingual education (in conformity to what has already been explained here), as they have the right to be taught in LIBRAS, their natural language, without suffering discrimination or being exposed to vexatious situations, respecting their condition of being a deaf person. Finally, we bring the report of good practice from the use of LIBRAS in the classroom. In the video from FCEE12 (Special Education Foundation of Santa Catarina), an experience report from two deaf people show the importance of having access to the sign language and discuss how fundamental the learning/teaching process through the sign language was for them – also tracing a parallel with the inclusive school (which preconizes that the deaf child, inserted in hearing children’s school, must have an interpreter) which, in the interviewees’ opinion (in accordance to many from the deaf community), does not provide the same development to the child, as the bilingual school is more appropriate for them.

 To watch the video, Access: https://youtu.be/nWPi4H_fiTw  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC28RC-sGjdGyTC4MtVQEMWQ 11  https://youtu.be/qZMu6RG-EDM 12  Fundação Catarinense de Educação Especial - https://youtu.be/VLmnRWZcqsI 9

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7.5 Final Considerations Although there have been progresses related to the use of LIBRAS in different spaces, there is still lots to be done in Brazil, especially in relation to the accessibility, that will provide to the deaf their introduction in different spheres of social activities and the formation of the deaf and of the interpreters/translators. It is still very frequent to find reports of deaf who go to hearing people’s school with an interpreter who does not have adequate information. Moreover, it is necessary that other professionals know the importance of the LIBRAS for the child’s linguistic development. In many families, when they receive the deafness diagnosis of somebody from the family, they do not always have the correct guidance about how the use of the sign language has a positive impact on the children’s linguistic development. These ideas about bilingual education meet the needs presented in the official documents which regulate sign language and the education for the deaf in Brazil. This is the case of the LDB, 2021, which determined how the bilingual teaching must be to deaf children in the country, which regulates the teaching from the LIBRAS, for example. There are also several researchers, specialists in the topic, who defend the teaching for the deaf children using the sign language, and Portuguese is taught in its written form (Quadros 1997; Lodi 2005, 2014; Lodi et al. 2015a, b). All the laws discussed in this chapter were essential to make the LIBRAS recognized (further than the document) in the country. However, society still has a lot to learn about deafness. Social media has an important role in the knowledge dissemination about sign language and culture, as it enables us to learn and deepen our knowledge about the deaf community. However, it is necessary to have more projects and public policies to accomplish what is preconized in the laws in different environments of the society. It is, therefore, essential to listen to the deaf so that we can advance as an (real) inclusive and equal society.

References BAKHTIN, M. Os gêneros do discurso. Tradução de Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2016. BRASIL. Lei n° 10.098, de 19 de dezembro de 2000. Estabelece normas gerais e critérios básicos para a promoção da acessibilidade das pessoas portadoras de deficiência ou com mobilidade reduzida, e dá outras providências. Diário Oficial da União. Available from: . Access: 08 out. 2021. BRASIL.  Lei n° 10.436, de 24 de abril de 2002. Dispõe sobre a Língua Brasileira de Sinais  – Libras e dá outras providências. Diário Oficial da União. Available from: . Access: 08 out. 2021. BRASIL. Decreto n° 5.626, de 22 de dezembro de 2005. Regulamenta a Lei n° 10.436, de 24 de abril de 2002, que dispõe sobre a Língua Brasileira de Sinais – Libras, e o art. 18 da Lei n° 10.098, de 19 de dezembro de 2000. Diário Oficial da União. Available from: . Access: 08 out. 2021.

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BRASIL.  Lei n° 12.796, de 4 de abril de 2013. Altera a Lei n° 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996, que estabelece as diretrizes e bases da educação nacional, para dispor sobre a formação dos profissionais da educação e dar outras providências. Diário Oficial da União. Available from: . Access: 26 out. 2018. BRASIL. Lei n° 14.191, de 3 de agosto de 2021. Altera a Lei n° 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996 (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional), para dispor sobre a modalidade de educação bilíngue de surdos. Diário Oficial da União. Available from: https://www.in.gov.br/en/web/ dou/-­/lei-­n-­14.191-­de-­3-­de-­agosto-­de-­2021-­336083749. Access: 12 out. 2021. CRUZ, C. R.; FINGER, I.; FONTES, A. B. A. da L. Efeitos do início da exposição linguística na consciência fonológica da Libras (L1) em crianças e adolescentes surdos. Gradus  - Revista Brasileira de Fonologia de Laboratório, Curitiba, v. 2, n. 1, p. 30-51, 2017. DEL RÉ, A.; HILÁRIO, R. N.; VIEIRA, A. J. A linguagem da criança na concepção dialógico-­ discursiva: retrospectiva e desafios teórico-metodológicos para o campo de Aquisição da Linguagem. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v. 16, n. 1, p. 12–38, jan./mar. 2021. DEL RÉ, A.; DE PAULA, L.; MENDONÇA, M. C. A linguagem da criança: um olhar bakhtiniano. São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2014a. DEL RÉ, A.; DE PAULA, L.; MENDONÇA, M.  C. Explorando o Discurso da Criança. São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2014b. FARACO, C. A. Linguagem & Diálogo – as ideias linguísticas do círculo de Bakhtin. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, 2009. HARRISON, K.  M. P.  Libras: apresentando a língua e suas características. In: LACERDA, C. B. F. de; SANTOS, L. F. dos. (Orgs.) Tenho um aluno surdo, e agora? Introdução à Libras e educação de surdos. São Carlos: EdUFSCar, 2014. KARNOPP, L. B. Aquisição Fonológica na Língua Brasileira de Sinais: estudo longitudinal de uma criança surda. Porto Alegre, 1999. Tese de Doutorado – PUCRS. KARNOPP, L. B. Aquisição fonológica nas línguas de sinais. Letras De Hoje, v. 32, n. 4, 2013a. Available from: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/fale/article/view/15296 Karnopp, Lodenir Becker. Aspectos da aquisição de línguas de sinais por crianças surdas. Estudos lingüísticos e literários. Salvador. N.44, p. 281–299, jul./dez.2011. KARNOPP, L. B. Produções culturais em língua brasileira de sinais (Libras). Letras de Hoje, Porto Alegre, v. 48, n. 3, p. 407–413, jul./set. 2013b. LODI, A. C. B. Plurilingüismo e surdez: uma leitura bakhtiniana da história da educação dos surdos. Educação e Pesquisa, São Paulo, v. 31, n. 3, p. 409–424, set./dez. 2005. LODI, A. C. B. Ensino da língua portuguesa como segunda língua para surdos: impacto na educação básica. In: LACERDA, C. B. F. de; SANTOS, L. F. dos. (Orgs.) Tenho um aluno surdo, e agora? Introdução à Libras e educação de surdos. São Carlos: EdUFSCar, 2014. LODI, A. C. B. et al. Letramento e surdez: um olhar sobre as particularidades do contexto educacional. In: LODI, A. C. B. et al. (Orgs.). Letramento, bilinguismo e educação de surdos. Porto Alegre: Mediação, 2015a. LODI, A.  C. B. et  al. (Orgs.). Letramento, bilinguismo e educação de surdos. Porto Alegre: Mediação, 2015b. QUADROS, R. M. de. Educação de Surdos. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas, 1997. QUADROS, R. M. de; KARNOPP, L. B. Língua de sinais brasileira: estudos linguísticos. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 2004. QUADROS, R. M. O “BI” em bilinguismo na educação de surdos. In: LODI, A. C. B. et al. (Orgs.). Letramento, bilinguismo e educação de surdos. Porto Alegre: Mediação, 2015. MOURA, M. C. Surdez e linguagem. In: LACERDA, C. B. F. de; SANTOS, L. F. dos. (Orgs.) Tenho um aluno surdo, e agora? Introdução à Libras e educação de surdos. São Carlos: EdUFSCar, 2014. PERLIN, G. Histórias de vida surda: Identidades em questão. Porto Alegre, 1998. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Available from: https://www.porsinal.pt/index.php?ps=artigos&idt=artc&cat=20&idart=153. Access: 10/10/2021.

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SKLIAR, C. (Org.) A surdez: um olhar sobre as diferenças. Porto Alegre: Editora Mediação, 1998. STOKOE, W. Sign Language Structure. Silver Spring: Linstok Press, ([1960] 1978). STREIECHEN, E. M. LIBRAS: Aprender está em suas mãos. Curitiba: Editora CRV, 2017. VOLÓCHINOV, V. Marxismo e filosofia da Linguagem – problemáticas fundamentais do método sociológico na ciência da linguagem. Tradução de Sheila Grillo e Ekaterina Vólkova Américo. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2018.

Chapter 8

Cultural Diversity in Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages: Opening up to Dialogue and Understanding Plural Identities Gabriela Ribeiro de Campos and Cláudia Helena Daher

Abstract  Globalization has reduced time and space, bringing different identities and cultures closer together. Such a close relationship, however, is not synonymous with peace, quite the contrary. The clash between identities and cultures continues to generate tensions and conflicts around the world. At this juncture, the teaching-­ learning of foreign languages is carried out through approaches that assume different concepts of culture and, thus, are able to reproduce or break with dominant worldviews. This topic is extremely relevant, especially at a time when national identities regain strength and dominant cultural groups proclaim superiority discourses. In this scenario of tension and discrimination between the multiple cultures and identities that make up humanity, we propose a teaching-learning of foreign languages focused on cultural diversity, based on Freire’s love and dialogue, capable of contributing to a reality of peace, justice and equality among human beings. Keywords  Cultural diversity · Teaching-learning · Modern foreign languages

8.1 Introduction The world has always housed a rich variety of identities and cultures. Many of them have been decimated along with the men and women who practised them, others suffocated in processes of domination and acculturation, while some were strengthened and disseminated as universalized models. The fact is that, until some time

G. R. de Campos (*) Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUC-PR), Curitiba, Brazil C. H. Daher Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Curitiba, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_8

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ago, those cultures and identities were seen as essential, fixed and stable – not that they really were but that was the conception at the time. In the twentieth century, the world undergoes an unprecedented technological revolution which leads, among other things, to a revolution in the means of transportation and communication. Then, it begins a process of deepening international relations in the economic, social, cultural and political spheres called globalization. Time and space have been reduced. The movements of people, goods, services and information have increased significantly. Cultures and identities have become unstable. However, the reduction of time and space and the increasingly close and intense relationship between different cultures and identities are not synonymous with harmony. The clash between them continues to generate tensions, conflicts and discrimination. This is because, although globalization has brought about structural changes on a global level, the dispute for power and influence continues and cultural hegemony is still an essential element in such game. At first glance, it may seem that these issues have nothing to do with education. More specifically, the teaching and learning of foreign languages are far from such discussion. However, that is a naive view. Education is a powerful tool in the reproduction of the dominant status quo or in the breaking with it. Therefore, education is defined according to interests that are consistent with the global scenario.

8.2 Culture and Identity According to Eagleton (2003, p.  40) “we owe our modern notion of culture to a large extent to nationalism and colonialism, as well as to the development of an anthropology at the service of imperial power”.1 These ideologies have something in common: one of their basis is the notion of culture aimed at a specific ethnic group. Colonizers subjugated the life forms of the indigenous peoples, who were considered uncivilized, and imposed their ways of life in colonialist experiences throughout history. And although many colonies gained their independence, the twentieth century was marked by the development of a “new” type of colonialism. “New” in quotation marks because it reproduces the same values and the same intentions of those practised during colonization but are achieved by different means. Likewise, the notion of “culture” becomes indispensable to nationalism. According to Hall (2005), the identification with the tribe, the people, the religion and the region, as well as the loyalty given to them in a pre-modern era, are gradually transferred to the idea of national culture in Western societies.

 Most of the quotes in this chapter were taken from their Brazilian Portuguese versions. In that case, the translations to English were made by us. 1

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The formation of a national culture involves the creation of a homogeneous culture, composed of symbols and representations, and of national cultural institutions, responsible for reproducing and consolidating the national culture, explains Hall (2005). As an example, he cites a national educational system, an institution that creates literacy standards, defines a language as a means of official communication for the entire nation and so on. We can observe, therefore, as Hall (2005, p. 50–51) writes, that national culture is a discourse, a way of building meanings “contained in the stories that are told about the nation, memories that connect its present with its past and images that are built from it”. These meanings influence and organize both the actions of the subjects and their conception of themselves, that is, how they build their identities. In this way, the nation state becomes a powerful source of meanings for modern cultural identities. In this sense, “culture” can be summarized as “the complex of values, customs, beliefs and practices that constitute the way of life of a specific group” (Eagleton 2003, p. 52). According to Eagleton (2003), this is not the true designation of a type of society but a normative way of imagining societies or their own social conditions in relation to those of other peoples. At this point, it becomes impossible to continue to understand the evolution of the terms “culture” and “identity” without thinking about the main phenomenon that has been transforming modern societies since the end of the twentieth century: globalization. According to Hall (2005), on the one hand, the discourse of global consumerism reduces cultural differences, which until then defined identities to the styles dictated by the market. Social life becomes increasingly mediated by the interconnected communication systems, which determine a lingua franca and an international currency, dictate lifestyles and define places and images. This leads to the displacement of the identities of specific times, spaces, histories and traditions, a phenomenon known as “cultural homogenization”. On the other hand, in the opposite direction of this “cultural homogenization”, Hall (2005, p. 77) points to “a fascination with difference and with the commodification of ethnicity and ‘otherness’”. He explains that globalization has as its strategy, the creation and exploitation of market niches, based on local specificities. “Thus, instead of thinking of the global as ‘replacing’ the local, it would be more accurate to think of a new articulation between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’”. It can be noted that such “identity crisis” is part of an even broader process of change: the transformation of modernity itself. In its conception, just as some theorists speak of a postmodern world, it is also possible to speak of postmodern human beings in relation to any essentialist or fixed definition of identity. The postmodern individual no longer has a fixed, essential and permanent identity; he/she has several identities, sometimes contradictory and unresolved (Hall, 2005). Finally, in view of the theories about the definition of culture and identity that exist today, the thesis that Eagleton (2003, p. 49) defends and that we would like to highlight here is that “we are currently trapped among notions of culture too broad

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to be useful and uncomfortably rigid, and our most urgent need is to move beyond them”. It is understood, as Eagleton (2003) affirms, that it is necessary to go beyond the notions of culture paradoxically broad and too restricted. Maybe, to arrive at a conception of culture as “a form of universal subjectivity at work within each one of us [...]” (Eagleton, 2003, p. 19). After all, it is necessary to emphasize that all cultures are interconnected and that, in order to understand the other, we do not cease to be ourselves.

8.3 Culture in the Teaching of Foreign Languages Having raised some issues involving the terms “culture” and “identity” and the historical evolution of such concepts, we now propose to understand how the notion of “culture” was interpreted and put into practice in the teaching-learning of foreign languages over the years and how such relationship happens today. According to Kramsch (2017), culture was considered a component of language study related to printed canonical literacy and general knowledge of literature and the arts until the mid-1970s. The so-called C culture (culture with a capital C), attributed to a cultured middle class, was an instrument for the construction of nation states in the nineteenth century, promoted as a national heritage in these territories. Therefore, it has become the traditionally taught culture in schools and universities in these countries, along with their official languages. Such conception of culture influenced the teaching-learning approaches of traditional foreign languages, such as grammar translation, which basically consists of teaching a foreign language from the apprentice’s mother tongue, and the direct approach, in which the foreign language is taught in the language studied, avoiding the use of the mother tongue as much as possible (Leffa 2016). It also influenced structuralist approaches, which aimed at the automatic and correct use of language through the repetitive practice of structures (Picanço 2003). These approaches disregarded cultural diversity within the classroom. From the 1970s onwards, “Culture” with a capital “C” loses space for “culture” with a lowercase “c”, that is, the culture of behaving, eating, talking and living on a daily basis. In this perspective, “culture has become synonymous with both lifestyle and everyday behaviors of members of speech communities who are linked by common experiences, memories, and aspirations,” writes Kramsch (2017, p. 141). Since then, this has been the most relevant concept of “culture” in the study of languages, notes the author, as is the case with the communicative approach, for example. In general, the modern perspectives of “culture” in the teaching of foreign languages gravitate towards the notion of national identity, which brings together members who speak the national language and share a supposedly homogeneous culture. However, these perspectives are being questioned by intellectuals who “challenge the supremacy of the native speaker and the notion of well-defined speech

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communities”, says Kramsch (2017). According to the author (2017, p. 147), postmodern perspectives that manage “not to lose the historicity of the local speech communities of a nation and, at the same time, respect the subjectivity of speakers and writers who participate in multiple global communities” emerge. The postmodern perspectives of “culture” in foreign language teaching seek to account for the intense changes at the global level that are displacing identities and subjectivating the concept of culture. In this sense, “culture has become discourse, that is, a social semiotic construction. Native and non-native speakers of a language will probably see their cultural horizon change and move in the process of understanding the other (...)” (Kramsch 2017, p. 145). From the moment when the notion of “culture” ceases to be limited to a territory or nation state and its history, Kramsch (2017, p.  145) suggests that it must be understood as “a dynamic discursive process, constructed and reconstructed in various ways by individuals involved in the clashes for symbolic meaning and in the control of subjectivities and interpretations of history”. From this perspective, what is at stake in the study of languages today is no longer just communicative competence but how these speakers will position themselves in the world. That is, “[i]n order to understand others, we have to understand what they remember from the past, what they imagine and project onto the future, and how they position themselves in the present. And we have to understand the same things of ourselves”, writes Kramsch (2006, p. 251). Negotiations of meaning during communicative situations in the teaching-­ learning space are elevated to the level of the understanding of the self, the other and the relationship between them.2 Exchanges are less and less guided by idealizations of well-defined national cultures and more and more within the multiple identities of speakers. Kramsch (2017) theorizes that seeing their cultures echoing each other through time and space can promote in students a postmodern subjectivity that, according to her, certain applied linguists (disciples of Bhabha) have located in the third place of the discourse, considering it a symbolic competence focused on the process of meaning itself. According to the author (2006, p. 251), “[s]ymbolic forms are not just items of vocabulary or communication strategies, but embodied experiences, emotional resonances, and moral imaginings”. We can understand that this communication competence, when explored in a foreign language classroom, in addition to promoting the ability to express, interpret and negotiate meanings in dialogue with others, gives rise to the ability to produce and exchange symbolic goods in the global context. This is, in Kramsch’s view (2006, p. 251), a “discursive turn”, which starts to see foreign language learners as “[...] not just communicators and problem solvers, but whole persons with hearts, bodies, and minds, with memories, fantasies, loyalties, identities”. This perception makes us look at the teaching of languages from a

 For other discussions on the relationship with the other, please check the articles by Del Ré and Mendonça and Vieira and Hilário in this book. 2

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less hegemonic point of view, more open to different perceptions and experiences and to the construction of meanings in a collective and dialogical way.

8.4 Dialogical Relationship between the Self and the Other Going back to the early twentieth century, we are faced with two opposing linguistic conceptions: “On the one hand, stylistic criticism that cared only for individual expression; on the other, emergent structural (Saussure), which focused on langue, the abstract grammatical form at the expense of other areas of language” (Todorov 1984, p. ix–x). From a different perspective from that of the linguists and stylists of his time, Bakhtin suggests that the utterance is not individually and infinitely variable but rather the product of the interaction between language and the context of the utterance, which belongs to history (Todorov 1984). In Voloshinov and Bakhtin’s (1976, p. 6) understanding, “in life, verbal discourse is clearly not self-sufficient. It is born of an extraverbal pragmatic situation and maintains the closest possible connection with this situation”. That is, the authors argue that discourse “is directly linked to life itself and cannot be divorced from it without losing its significance”. This means that discourse dialogues, intentionally or not, with past, present and future discourses on a given subject, gaining an intertextual dimension, says Todorov (1984). According to the author, in this dialogical relationship, “a single voice can only be heard by mixing with the complex chorus of other already existing voices” (1984, p. x). As he develops his theories of language, Bakhtin feels the need to formulate a new concept of culture, considering it the “discourses retained by collective memory (commonplaces and stereotypes as well as exceptional words), the discourses in relation to which every enunciating subject must be located” (Todorov 1984, p. x). Such is a concept very close to that proposed by Eagleton (2003, p. 19), mentioned previously, which considers culture as “a form of universal subjectivity in operation within each one of us [...]”. When thinking about the relationship between language and culture, we agree with Kramsch (2017, p. 139), who writes that “language is not a portion of arbitrary linguistic forms applied to a cultural reality that can be found outside the language, in the real world”. There is no inside or outside, in this case, because language and culture are together, in the same place, in a dialogical relationship. According to the author (2017, p. 139), Without language and other symbolic systems, the habits, beliefs, institutions, and monuments we call culture would only be observable realities and not cultural phenomena. To become culture, they have to have meaning, because it is the meaning we give to food, gardens and life forms that constitutes culture.

Voloshinov and Bakhtin (1976) theorize that the individual and the subjective have their opposites behind them: the social and the objective, respectively. What each

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one knows, sees, wants, loves, etc. cannot be presumed; only what all speakers know, see, want, love, etc. can. Only the points at which all are united can become the presumed part of an utterance, the authors affirm. In addition, the discourses are based especially on the materiality of the world present in the horizon of the speakers and the real conditions of life that constitute communities of judgements of value, that is, people who live at the same time, in the same place, who belong to the same family, who practise the same profession, who are part of the same social group, etc. (Voloshinov and Bakhtin 1976). This means that, for Voloshinov and Bakhtin (1976, p. 8), “the ‘I’ can be accomplished verbally only on the basis of the ‘we’”, because presumed judgements of value are regular and essential social acts and not individual emotions. “Individual emotions can arise only as overtones following the basic tone of social evaluation”. In this direction, we can affirm, with Todorov (1984), that the human being only exists in dialogue, through which one finds the other. If from a Bakhtinian’s perspective language is not only a linguistic system, but a coherent symbolic system for the production of meanings, according to Kramsch (2017), we agree with the author that the teaching-learning of a foreign language is also not only the study of a linguistic system but the understanding of oneself and the other. After all, “learning about a foreign culture without being aware of its own discursive practices can lead to an ahistorical and anachronistic understanding of the Other and a basic and therefore limited understanding of the Self” (Kramsch 2017, p. 146). In the conception of Kramsch (2017, p. 138), “(...) language students learn who they are through their encounter with the Other”. In the search to understand the historical and subjective experiences lived by others, each student ends up becoming aware of the historical and subjective experiences that compose him/her but that he/she did not see before and now begins to see through the eyes of the other. Kramsch (2017, p. 139) emphasizes Bakhtin’s theory that “cultural and personal identity does not precede the encounter with the foreign Other; on the contrary, it is built through the obligation to respond to the Other via dialogue”. Such dialogue is “composed of utterances and answers, [which] connects not only two face-to-face interlocutors, but distant readers and authors, present and past texts”. According to the author, this ability to see oneself from the other presented by foreign language students is called “transgression” by Bakhtin. It goes beyond the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately, proposing the reflection of each one on their own experience, from an internal and external view. Kramsch (2017, p. 139) calls this position “third place”, achieved by what she calls “symbolic competence”. This all has to do with something broader, which is the very condition of men and women as beings situated in the world, but not only that: beings with the world. This idea is from Paulo Freire, who believes that the vocation of human beings is not simply to be in the world passively but to act and transform reality based on loving and dialogical relationships (Freire 2014). As subjects, and not mere spectators, men and women inherit experiences previously acquired, create and recreate, “integrating themselves with the conditions of

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their context, responding to their challenges, aiming at themselves, discerning, transcending” (Freire 1999, p. 49), appropriating domains that are exclusive to them: that of history and that of culture. Critically conscious men and women, therefore, free, create and recreate from their creativity, dynamizing the world in which and with which they live. They, therefore, make culture, says Freire (1999). The movement generated by the relations “of man with the world and of man with men, challenged and responding to the challenge, changing, creating, which does not allow immobility, except in terms of relative preponderance, neither of societies nor of cultures” (Freire 1999, p. 51). In his words, In the permanent relations man-reality, man-structure, reality-man, structure-man originates the dimension of the cultural that in a broad sense, anthropo-logical-descriptive, is all that man creates and recreates. Cultural, in the sense that interests us here, is as much a primitive instrument of hunting, of war, as is the language or the work of Picasso. All the products that result from the activity of man, all his works, material or spiritual, because they are human products that are detached from man, turn to him and mark him, imposing on him ways of being and behaving also cultural. In this respect, of course, the way of walking, of speaking, of greeting, of dressing, of tastes, are cultural. Cultural is also the view that men have or are having of their own culture, of their reality. (Freire 1979, p. 31)

Therefore, the importance of men and women being necessarily with the world and with others, situated in their historical, social, cultural contexts, critically aware of their realities and active in them (Freire 2019). “When a human being intends to imitate another, he is no longer himself. Thus also the servile imitation of other cultures produces an alienated society or object-society. The more someone wants to be another, the less he is himself”, Freire warns us (1979, p. 19). It is, therefore, the dialogical relations with the world and with others that lead to the integration of the subject to their spatial-temporal context, preventing their adaptation, accommodation and adjustment, that is, their dehumanization, says Freire (2018). According to the author, this integration is perfected as consciousness becomes critical, a condition that promotes creativity and freedom. “Therefore, every time freedom is suppressed, he becomes a merely adjusted or accommodated being” (Freire 1999, p. 50). Dialogic and loving relationships presuppose respect for the other. Respect for the fact that “each person is an original and unique source of their own way of knowing and whatever the quality of this knowledge, it has a value in itself because it represents the representation of an individual experience of life and sharing in social life” (Brandão 2010, p. 70). That “each culture represents a way of life and an original and authentic way of being, living, feeling and thinking of one or several social communities” (Brandão 2010, p. 70). In this perspective, teaching and learning a foreign language means more than teaching and learning to read words and develop certain instrumental skills. It means teaching and learning throughout a dialogic and loving process in which equitable and respectful participation matters more than the content with which one works. It means teaching and learning through collective reflection and action, seeking the liberation of men and women from the condition of oppressors and oppressed and

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uniting them in the transformation of the world into a more loving, dialogic and respectful place. Thus, it is important to choose the materials to be taken to the classroom, which should take into account the diversity of the language(s) and culture(s) taught, as well as the attitude of teachers and students in this process, in order to promote an openness to the collective construction of knowledge, valuing the plurality of identities and subjectivities.

8.5 Final Considerations “Praxis” is the term used by Freire (2015) to designate the dialogical relationship between theory and practice. For him, practice without theory becomes mere verbalism, and theory without practice becomes simple activism. Therefore, the authentic practice, one capable of transforming people who then transform the world, is one in which theory and practice go together and complement each other. Therefore, a praxis focused on cultural diversity can only be the result of reflections and actions in this sense. We believe that the starting point is the recognition of cultural diversity by foreign language educators. If these professionals do not recognize that the educational space where they work is heterogeneous and houses a multiplicity of identities and cultures, their teaching-learning cannot be thought of from this perspective. However, solely the recognition of diversity by educators is not enough. It is necessary that they become critically aware of this reality, so that they can act in the awareness of the students and promote actions of transformation of society towards inclusion and equality. In addition, it is essential to become aware that language is also multiple, plural and constantly evolving. Learning foreign languages takes on another dimension when it opens our horizons on the diversity of the peoples who speak them and makes us reflect on our own languages. We believe that knowledge of a foreign language produces a transformation of the learner’s personal identity, who becomes able to interact with other communities and cultures, in addition to providing an expansion of skills in terms of literacy and reflection on their mother tongue. In short, it is important that language teaching-learning spaces are spaces for communication and affective investments, in which the language of the other becomes accessible and attractive, representing a new way of expressing ourselves and exchanging experiences and conceptions of the world. From a Freirean perspective, we could talk about dialogic and loving educational spaces, which meet the objective of Agenda 2030: making students citizens of the world, according to Akkari and Hadhouane (2020), pointing to heterogeneous contexts permeated by the notion of humanity.

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References AKKARI, A.; HADHOUANE, M.  Au-delà du débat conceptuel interculturel / multiculturel, travaillons-­nous à l’école pour maintenir l’exclusion ou pour promouvoir l’inclusion? Journal de recherches du Institut d’apprentissage et d’enseignement, v. 6, p.16–27, 2020. BRANDÃO, C. R. Círculo de cultura. In: STRECK, D. R.; REDIN, E.; ZITKOSKI, J. J. (orgs.). Dicionário Paulo Freire. 2ª ed. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2010. EAGLETON, T. A ideia de cultura. Tradução de Sofia Rodrigues. Lisboa: Temas e Debates, 2003. FREIRE, P. Ação cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos. 17ª ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2019. FREIRE, P. Educação como prática da liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1999. FREIRE, P. Educação e mudança. Tradução de Moacir Gadotti e Lílian Lopes Martin. 12ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1979. FREIRE, P. Pedagogia da autonomia: saberes necessários à prática educativa. 51ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2015. FREIRE, P. Pedagogia da esperança: um reencontro com a pedagogia do oprimido. 24ª ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2018. FREIRE, P. Pedagogia do oprimido. 58ª ed. Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra: 2014 HALL, S. A identidade cultural na pós-modernidade. 10ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: DP&A, 2005. KRAMSCH, C.  Cultura no ensino de língua estrangeira. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v. 12 n. 3, p.134–152, Set./Dez, 2017. KRAMSCH, C. From communicative competence to symbolic competence. The Modern Language Journal, 90, II, p. 249–252, 2006. LEFFA, V. J. Língua estrangeira. Ensino e aprendizagem. Pelotas: EDUCAT, 2016. PICANÇO, D. C. L. História, memória e ensino de espanhol (1942–1990): as interfaces do ensino da língua espanhola como disciplina escolar a partir da memória de professores, métodos de ensino e livros didáticos no contexto das reformas educacionais. Curitiba: Ed. da UFPR, 2003. TODOROV, T. Mikhail Bakhtin: the dialogical principle. Theory and history of literature, v. 13. Translated by Wlad Godzich. Manchester University Press. United Kingdom, 1984. VOLOSHINOV, V.  N.; BAKHTIN, M.  M. Discurso na vida e discurso na arte. Tradução de Carlos Alberto Faraco e Cristovão Tezza, para uso didático, com base na tradução inglesa de I. R. Titunik (“Discourse in life and discourse in art – concerning sociological poetics”). In: VOLOSHINOV, V. Freudism, New York: Academic Press, 1976.

Chapter 9

Portuguese as a Welcoming Language: Breaking Linguistic and Cultural Boundaries Nildiceia Aparecida Rocha and Rosangela Sanches da Silveira Gileno

Abstract  In the linguistic education process, the reasons for teaching and learning Portuguese for migrants and refugees are associated with the needs related to their insertion in the country. Thus, the circumstances and contexts of the participants must be considered and conducted from the teaching modality of Portuguese for foreigners named Portuguese as a Welcoming Language (PLAc, from the Portuguese “Português como língua de acolhimento”) whose goal is to promote teaching-­ learning from the perspective of reception and interculturality, aiming at the literacy of sociocultural practices of Brazilian society (GROSSO. Horizontes de Linguística Aplicada, v. 9, n.2, p. 61–77, 2010; São Bernardo, Português como língua de acolhimento: um estudo comimigrantes e pessoas em situação de refúgio no Brasil. Tese (Doutorado em Linguística) Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos: 2016; Sene, Materialidades e objetivos para o ensino de português como língua deacolhimento: um estudo de caso. Dissertação (Mestrado em Linguística Aplicada)  – Universidade de Brasília, Brasília: 2017; LOPEZ and DINIZ, Revista da Sociedade Internacional Português Língua Estrangeira, Brasília, edição especial n. 9, s./p: 2018). From this perspective, it is considered that linguistic and cultural needs are relevant for inclusion in the new social context. Therefore, social, historical, cultural, and psychological issues are part of the planning of activities linked to content, format, and duration (Vieira and Aranha, The ESPecialist 36(1): 2015), since in many cases, the vulnerability of the target audience can generate difficulties for insertion (Amado, Revista da Sociedade Internacional Português Língua Estrangeira  - SIPLE, Brasília 7(2): 2013), as well as social maladjustments. Therefore, the text initially traces historically the term and the understanding of the Reception Language, specifically Portuguese as a Welcoming Language (PLAc) or Portuguese Welcoming Language. Then, we present the context in which we carry out the activities and actions of the “Project Portuguese as a Welcoming Language (PLAc) for Venezuelans” offered by a State University in the interior of the State of São Paulo, Brazil, in partnership with the municipality of the city and a religious N. A. Rocha (*) · R. S. da Silveira Gileno São Paulo State University (UNESP), São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_9

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institution in the same city, from its beginnings to the present day, passing through the face-to-face and online modality. Afterward, we bring the voices of the participants of the referred PLAc project, in which it is possible to observe how the articulation between language and culture has refracted in ruptures of initially perceived barriers and verified discrimination, hence establishing bridges and strengths for the insertion in the new context, in Brazilian culture and in the Portuguese language. Finally, we reflect on the urgency of publicizing and implementing similar projects in Brazilian territory and, why not to say, overseas. Keywords  Portuguese as a Welcoming Language · Brazilian culture and interculturality · Discrimination · Migrants and refugees

9.1 Introduction Regarding the teaching, learning, and acquisition of languages, especially foreign languages, there has been a linguistic and methodological movement in the search to meet urgent needs in view of the great flow of displacements of people around the world, both virtually and physically, which we consider the matter of study of this text. More specifically, we refer to the displacement of people forced to abandon their country of origin and their mother tongue(s) to “refuge” or rather try to “be welcomed” in other geographical spaces with another language/culture.1 In this context, our aim is to show how the Portuguese language has been an element of “welcome” and of breaking off borders in order to mitigate social inequalities and contribute to the insertion of “migrants” and “refugees” in the new social, economic, labor, historical, and cultural context, through actions that seek to break down linguistic barriers, promoting courses, workshops, lectures, and conversation circles of Portuguese as a Welcoming Language (PLAc) that propagate the diffusion of inter- and transdisciplinary cultural, linguistic, historical, and ethical aspects of the sociocultural practices present in Brazil. The terminologies adopted in this text, “migrants” and “refugees,” meet the guidelines established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Thus, we understand by “refugees” those people who need to leave their countries for fear of persecution related to issues of race, religion, nationality, and political opinion or belonging to a particular social group. By “migrants,” we mean those people who leave their countries voluntarily, in search of better economic and labor opportunities. In this way, we will use the terms “migrants” and “refugees” to refer to the public attended by the PLAc activity projects, also encompassing “refugee” people who are seeking legal recognition of this condition, such as asylum seekers. Based on the assumptions presented, we intend to give visibility to actions and reflections on linguistic/cultural reception practices during the teaching-learning

 For another discussion on language and culture, see chapter by Campos and Daher in this book.

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process of Portuguese for foreigners in a situation of immersion in Brazil in a project of extension “Project Portuguese as a Welcoming Language (PLAc) for Venezuelans” offered to communities from different countries, by teachers and graduate and undergraduate students from a university in the interior of the State of São Paulo, Brazil. Before reporting the activities of the Extension Project, it is relevant to discuss the term Welcoming Language.

9.2 Welcoming Language Throughout history of the teaching, learning, and acquisition of languages, especially foreign languages, several and varied nomenclatures have been used, according to the theoretical framework and the specificities and requirements of each context, affiliated to each historical moment, linguistic policy, and linguistic theories that guide teaching and learning processes. In a descriptive line of the methods and approaches, we can list several ones that were used as a guideline for the teaching and learning of foreign languages and that in a certain way are still used today with some adaptations, such as the grammar-translation method; the direct method; the audio-lingual method; the alternative methods, considered humanistic as the total physical response; and the communicative approach with various trends, including the cultural and intercultural perspective, among others. Different linguistic theories, as well as theories of teaching, learning, and acquisition, underlie teaching methods and approaches. The choices can be for assorted reasons, and one of them is to meet a specific purpose, determined by a teaching-learning context with a different target audience. As our focus is on the specificity of thinking and reflecting on the teaching, learning, and assessment of Portuguese for foreigners in the context of Portuguese for immigrants in a situation of forced displacement, here understood as Portuguese as a Welcoming Language, it is worth revisiting the different nomenclatures used in the area, namely, PLE, PL2, PFOL, PLNM, PLA, PLAc, and PLH, among others. Since Portuguese as a foreign language or Portuguese foreign language (PLE – Português como Língua Estrangeira – in Portuguese) area was institutionalized in the late 1980s and more precisely in the 1990s, with the beginning of the internationalization process in Brazilian universities, according to Bulla and Kuhn (2020, p. 2), the acronym PLE is the term that can be considered the most representative “of a set of foundational contexts of the area that today has been, in general, called PLE and/or PLA in Brazil.” According to Bulla and Kuhn, In parallel with the areas of English, French, Italian, German etc. as Foreign Languages in Brazil, the denomination PLE was especially able to establish a distinction, in methodological terms, with the area of Portuguese as a Mother Tongue (PLM), commonly referred to in Brazil as Portuguese or Portuguese in Language courses, in schools, in government documents that establish official parameters of Brazilian education. Over the years, and strongly linked to the expansion of research in Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Linguistic

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In this set of specificities, the Welcoming Language, for Bulla and Khun, is understood as the teaching of Portuguese to immigrants “very strongly based on academic publications that reflect on Portugal, such as Grosso (2010)” but still punctuate the classes that this term can be seen as “problematic” (Bulla and Kuhn 2020, p. 8 apud Anunciação 2017), because the context of Brazil is different from Portugal, and in addition, the term has been “romanticized,” causing a certain shade of “charity” to the apprentice. In terms of discourse, Silva and Costa (2020) also consider the term Português Língua de Acolhimento (PLAc) as the teaching of the majority language in Brazil in a context of “unprecedented and urgent demands in the context of teaching Portuguese for migrants in situations of vulnerability” (p. 126) and also in the same scope of Amado (2011) and Grosso (2010). But in the Brazilian context, we are facing a “crisis scenario, extreme situations, weaknesses, omissions and state absences, but which has also been a place of (re)significations of Portuguese language teaching from the perspective of welcoming [...]” (p.  132). Silva and Costa (2020) emphasize that the PLAc will not and does not want to replace the PLE but rather proposes an “other theoretical-methodological approach, whose specificities reach discriminatory, psychosocial and other extralinguistic aspects considered fundamental” (idem) in the sense of providing conditions to serve migrants under given conditions. According to Fiorelli et  al. (2021, p.  90), the term Welcoming Language was used for the first time in the Portugal Acolhe Program, created in 2001 by the Portuguese State with “the objective of offering Portuguese courses exclusively to immigrants and refugees.” From the perspective of Ançã (2008) and Grosso (2010), the Welcoming Language is also understood as a process of teaching, learning, and language assessment in order to meet a specific context of immigrant or refugee students who need to acquire and learn the language to be able to move linguistically and socially in the new society. In this way, they can have their urgent and emergency needs met, such as work, housing, medical care, education, etc., in line with Silva and Costa (2020) and Bulla and Kuhn (2020). A differential point that Fiorelli et al. (2021) observes is the need to also meet the need of these migrants to “eel affectively welcomed and strengthened” (p. 92), so that they can have more autonomy in the context that welcomes them. Our contexts of study and analysis in this text are linguistic and cultural reception practices of Portuguese for foreigners in a situation of immersion in Brazil,  The English versions of the quotes that are originally in Portuguese were made by us.

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developed in the Extension Project “Portuguese as a Welcoming Language for Venezuelans.” In the Brazilian scenario, this term has been re-dimensioned based on studies and publications by Amado (2011, 2013). We highlight the emotional and conflictive character that can occur in the process of teaching, learning, and evaluating a Welcoming Language, in agreement with the studies of São Bernardo and Barbosa (2017). In the words of Fiorelli et al. (2021) in the context in which they were inserted, the emotional fact was fundamental, namely, This emotional prism and the conflicting relationship that may be present, especially because of the vulnerability that many immigrants or refugees find themselves in upon arrival in a foreign country, may influence the process of acquisition and learning of the target language. For this reason, teaching should be planned, elaborated, and conducted with an awareness of these crossings that may be in this teaching context (p. 93).

We agree with Lopez and Diniz (2018) regarding the transdisciplinary constitution in PLAc, which “demands a continuous dialogue with different fields of knowledge as well as with different entities of civil society” (Fiorelli et al. 2021, p. 94). In this way, we understand that the teaching of Portuguese in a welcoming situation/context cannot be considered a simple “adaptation” of knowledge and teaching practices that we are used to carry out but another construct, perhaps a new one, as a displacement of the teaching practice to meet the basic, urgent, and specific needs and objectives of each context in which these migrants are inserted, especially considering the vast geography, history, and culture/language of Brazil. From this point of view, in the next section, we will explain our context of teaching Portuguese as a Welcoming Language.

9.3 Our Welcoming Experience with Portuguese Language In recent years, we have experienced a greater migratory flow around the planet. Specifically in South America, Venezuela, which borders the north of Brazil, has experienced political, economic, and social misfortunes that have led many of its inhabitants to seek refuge in other countries, especially in Brazil. To meet this demand, the Brazilian Government created, in 2018, the Operação Acolhida project,3 with the aim of guaranteeing basic care for these people who cross the border between Venezuela and Brazil. According to data released by the Operação Acolhida project, updated on May 27, 2021, 265,000 requests for migration regularization were registered. Up to the date, the data was almost 255,000 CPFs (Cadastro de Pessoa Físicas)4 had been issued to this audience. The Operação Acolhida also works with the internalization process of migrants and refugees, such as the displacement of these groups of people from Roraima, on the border, to other

 OPERAÇÃO ACOLHIDA. Available from . Access: 30 out. 2021 4  CPF is like Brazil’s Social Security Numbers (SSN). 3

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Brazilian states. With this, many migrants and refugees arrived in the interior of São Paulo and in the city of Araraquara and the region. Thus, seeking to welcome the Venezuelan migrants who arrived in the city of Araraquara, in 2018, we started the project “Portuguese as a Welcoming Language (PLAc) for Venezuelans,” offered by the São Paulo State University, in partnership with the Municipality of Araraquara and a religious institution in the same city with the purpose of offering an emergency and intensive course in Portuguese to these families, as a form of reception. In 2018 and 2019, activities such as workshops on literature and cultural and intercultural activities were developed at a public school on Saturdays. At that time, the students were mostly Venezuelans, which the church received. And at the end of 2019, the project already attended around 100 students, including adults, teenagers, and children (Fiorelli et al. 2021). According to Sene and Matos e Gileno (2021), face-to-face Portuguese courses were offered, in the Brazilian variant, to the adult public, in a basic level (AC1) and intermediate level (AC2), and for children, PLAczinho Baby (illiterate children) and PLAczinho Maior (literate children). Teaching strategies and pedagogical and didactic dynamics planned and executed by the project team were created from the human and physical resources available in order to meet the teaching context in a more adequate way, the age group of the students, and the needs presented by them in learning Portuguese: in this way, thematic classes, intercultural activities, and moments of encouragement and access to books. In 2020, due to the pandemic generated by COVID-19, the PLAc online course was started, in partnership with the Center for Languages and Teacher Development. In this online format, the courses were developed in order to meet the new teaching and learning needs in the face of the pandemic. Thus, throughout 2020, video classes were made available on the YouTube platform, as well as writing activities shared with the group of apprentices via WhatsApp and available in a folder on Google Drive. In addition, since then, we have made available every week, on Thursdays, some time for questions on duty, and every 15  days we hold, on Saturdays, synchronous meetings through video calling platforms (via Google Meet). Synchronous and asynchronous activities were developed, such as specific minicourses and recordings on culture, grammar, and Portuguese language courses for foreign adults and children (called Placzinho), always based on topics of interest and needs of foreign students.

9.4 Students’ Reflections on PLAc Learning In view of the presentation of the context of teaching, learning, and evaluation of PLAc focused here, we bring as a reflection the voices of some of our students in the project specified above. In 2019, we participated in an interview for the Brazilian television channel called Rede Globo, in which we can “listen” and reflect on what the linguistic and

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cultural reception actions carried out by the aforementioned Extension Project can promote in students. To this end, we indicate the link to access the written interview, https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-­carlos-­regiao/noticia/2019/10/21/projeto-­da-­unesp-­ ensina-­a-­lingua-­portuguesa-­para-­imigrantes-­venezuelanos-­em-­araraquara.ghtml, and access to the specific link of the television report:  - https://globoplay.globo. com/v/8018918/. In the interview, we can observe how the interviewer gradually and reflexively presents the project, in order to perceive the collaborative and joint work carried out by those involved in the project. Considering what the students say, we will initially see the following experience report of some of them (approximate transcription to speech), called here Participants H, namely, H1 (as being Man 1), H2 (Man 2), and M1 (Woman 1). These three participants attended the basic level of Portuguese language classes. The fourth participant, H3 (Man 3), was a student who was taking the intermediate level classes (started in 2018): –– H1: “Eu preciso fazer um trabalho.” (“I need to get a schoolwork done.” –– H2: “Pega água, pega suco, pega ônibus... (risos)” (“Get water, get juice, get bus... (laughs).”) –– M1: “Eu gosto das aulas, eles fazem divertidas para nós.” (“I like the classes, they make them fun for us.”) –– H3: “Eles ensinam para nós coisas que são ... que a gente realmente vai utilizar vai usar no dia a dia, a forma da linguística, a forma da gramática, e... o Brasil é um país de muita mistura, muitas culturas encontradas, aí a gente consegui se comunicar com outras pessoas, e aí dá certo.” (“They teach us things that are... that we will actually use in our daily lives, the form of linguistics, the form of grammar, and... Brazil is a country of a lot of mixture, many cultures found, then we were able to communicate with other people, and that works.”) We can verify in the previous statements, which can be contextualized by watching the interview video (link in the image), that these correspond to the first impressions that the students have of the classes and activities in the Portuguese teaching project for these foreigners. In the first three statements, we can see that the students are learning and in a happy way and, therefore, with meaning, the language and its use, as they understand that the verb “pegar” can be used in different contexts; it can be either to drink water or juice or yet to get on a public transport, such as a bus. In this way, students perceive the polysemy of the Portuguese language and consider this aspect graceful. A factor that is confirmed in M1’s speech, when she reports that the teachers have mobilized the classes with a tone of joy and grace, making it fun, is an important fact for learning because it promotes a taste for classes, which then mobilizes learning. In turn, H3 brings to light a more detailed analysis of how the classes are and relates their learning of the Portuguese language with the Brazilian culture as in a process of education and linguistic awareness. Thus, we can verify that the methodology used by the teachers collaborated positively in the process of learning, communication, interaction, and insertion in the context in which the students are

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inserted and consequently, breaking barriers and establishing linguistic and cultural bridges. Following from that, we can observe in the speech of H3, when asked about the word he likes the most and that expresses what he feels when he is in Brazil and learning the Portuguese language and Brazilian culture, he reports that “acolhimento” (welcoming) is his favorite word, and again he analyzes himself, declaring that this is his favorite word because it reflects the way in which the project organizers, teachers, collaborators, and everyone have been “nice,” welcoming them: –– H3: “Eu acho que acolhimento, quando eles explicaram o.. a forma em que essa palavra encaixa para nos receber de forma cordial aqui, eu acho que achei boa, legal (risos).” (“I think that acolhimento, when they explained the... the way in which this word fits to welcome us in a cordial way here, I think I thought it was good, cool (laughs).”) We can thus verify in the words of the students themselves, at least some of them, how the actions of the Project Portuguese as a Welcoming Language for Venezuelans have been a bridge between what they brought from their country and their language and culture in (sometimes conflicting) encounters with language and culture in the new context in Brazil.

9.5 Final Considerations Considering, at present, the Welcoming Language on the one hand as a construct in process, facing the situation of subjects who are in geographic, social, linguistic, and cultural displacements, and on the other hand also as part of a process of displacements in the teaching practice and in the students’ learning, we understand that this reception should promote access to the basic, urgent, and specific needs of each foreigner (whether in a vulnerable situation or not). Thus, the project for teaching and learning Portuguese as a Welcoming Language for Venezuelans, in the context presented here, has been a place for learning exchanges between students and teachers/collaborators, as well as promoting reflections and resignifications in a constant teaching and student identity process. As we have seen, the Project “Portuguese as a Welcoming Language for Venezuelans” had its actions aimed at welcoming and aiming at citizenship, fundamentally in its broadest aspect, which is social, cultural, economic, and labor insertion in the host country, in Brazil. In the scenario of forced migration, the reasons for learning the language of the host country are marked by the need for survival and the resumption of dignity as a person and as a citizen who has the right to study and work. Based on this assumption, it is considered that linguistic and cultural needs are essential for the inclusion of these foreigners in the new social context. It is essential, therefore, in the PLAc project, to know the students involved and their needs, their life stories, and their possible interests in the new context, to promote the

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teaching process in a satisfactory way, since the objective of the PLAc course is to insert the refugee into the society of the host country so that they can live and interact with others, linguistically and culturally. In this way, the present text brings a brief history and position on the term host language, in particular PLAc, to focus on an experience from an Extension Project of a Brazilian university in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil, bringing the voices of foreign students, the main actors in this process. In their voices, we can verify the articulation between language and culture methodologically developed by the teachers and perceived by the students and how such articulation has promoted the insertion and interaction of these students in their contexts and can be seen as ruptures of linguistic and cultural barriers. Finally, leaving a glimpse of possible readings and interpretations, we propose to our reader to reflect on the urgency of mobilizing, carrying out, and institutionalizing actions in favor of the PLAc modality, having visibility and institutional and governmental support, in order to welcome people from abroad and diminish any kind of discrimination they may encounter on their ways in the new culture they are inserted.

References AMADO, R. S. Português como Segunda Língua para comunidades de trabalhadores transplantados. In: Revista da Sociedade Internacional Português Língua Estrangeira - SIPLE, Brasília, v.2, 2011. AMADO, R. S. O ensino de português como língua de acolhimento para refugiados. In:Revista da Sociedade Internacional Português Língua Estrangeira  - SIPLE, Brasília, v.7, ano 4, n. 2, 2013. ANÇÃ, M. H. F. – Língua portuguesa em novos públicos. Saber (e) Educar. Porto: ESE de Paula Frassinetti. n.° 13, p. 71–87, 2008. ANUNCIAÇÃO, R. F. M. Somos mais que isso: práticas de (re)existência de migrantes e refugiados frente à despossessão e ao não reconhecimento. 127f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Linguística Aplicada) - Unicamp, Campinas, 2017. BULLA, G.  S.; KUHN, T.  Z. ReVEL na Escola: Português como Língua Adicional no Brasil: perfis e contextos implicados. ReVEL. v. 18, n. 35, 2020. [www.revel.inf.br] FIORELLI, C. M. et al. O ensino de português língua de acolhimento (PLAc) para venezuelanos no interior paulista: trajetória e perspectiva. In: ROCHA, N.  A.; GILENO, R.  S. S. (org.). Português Língua Estrangeira e suas interfaces. Campinas, SP: Pontes Editores, 2021. GROSSO, M. J. Língua de acolhimento, língua de integração. Revista Horizontes de Linguística Aplicada, v. 9, n. 2, p.  61–77, 2010. Available from: https://www.academia.edu/6956350/ L%C3%ADngua_de_acolhimento_l%C3%ADngua_de_integra%C3%A7%C3%A3o. Access: 01 jun. 2021. LOPEZ, A. P. A.; DINIZ, L. R. A. Iniciativas jurídicas e acadêmicas para o acolhimento no Brasil de deslocados forçados. In: Revista da Sociedade Internacional Português Língua Estrangeira, Brasília, edição especial n. 9, s./p., 2018. SÃO BERNARDO, M.  A.; BARBOSA, L.  M. A.  Língua de Acolhimento. In: CAVALCANTI, L. et al. (org.). Dicionário Crítico de Migrações Internacionais. Brasília: Editora UNB, 2017.

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SÃO BERNARDO, M.  D. Português como língua de acolhimento: um estudo comimigrantes e pessoas em situação de refúgio no Brasil. Tese (Doutorado em Linguística) Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, 2016. SENE, L. S. Materialidades e objetivos para o ensino de português como língua deacolhimento: um estudo de caso. Dissertação (Mestrado em Linguística Aplicada) – Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 2017. SENE, L. S; MATOS, T. L. C.; GILENO, R.S.S. Português como Língua de Acolhimento para Venezuelanos(as): estratégias e práticas de ensino em tempos de pandemia. Rev. EntreLínguas, Araraquara, v. 7, n. esp. 6, e021157, dez. 2021 SILVA, F.C.; COSTA, E.  J. O ensino de Português como Língua de Acolhimento (PLAc) na linha do tempo dos estudos sobre o Português Língua Estrangeira (PLE) no Brasil. Revista Horizontes de Linguística Aplicada, ano 19, n.1, 2020. UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES (UNHCR). Global Trends Forced Displacement (2020). Switzerland: UNCHR, 2020 [Relatório]. Available from: < https://www.unhcr.org/60b638e37/unhcr-­global-­trends-­2020 >. Access: 18 jun. 2021. VIEIRA, B.  G. A.  M.; ARANHA, S.  A análise de necessidades da trajetória da elaboração de um curso de EAP para pós-graduandos em ciência da computação. In: The ESPecialist, v. 36, n. 1, 2015

Chapter 10

A Discussion on Literacy for Young and Adults: Literature Classics in Dialogue with Paulo Freire Vanessa Cristina Girotto Nery, Renata de Fátima Gonçalves, Thais Aparecida Bento Reis, and Elizabeth Orofino

Abstract  The issue of literacy in Brazil is related to much broader questions than just a process of decoding words. History shows that when it comes to adult literacy, there is a debt to this group of people since there is still a considerable number of adult illiterates in the country, even with improvements in the educational proposals of the last decades. Based on this fact, we present a reflection on how Paulo Freire’s studies suggest the political and non-neutral nature of the schooling offered to adults. In this sense, we reflect on how the use of literary classics in the education of young and adults contributes to making literacy an emancipatory practice, a process that goes beyond reading words and mechanical decoding and that enables each student to read the world in which they are inserted. This chapter is divided into three sections: the discussion starts with frameworks of education of young and adult people in regard to regulatory aspects. After that, we present the idea of literacy by Paulo Freire, considering it as far more than the decodification of words. Following that, we discuss how the universal classics can be used as emancipatory reading in the education of young and adults. These three main topics lead us to the final considerations on the subject addressed. Keywords  Literary classics · Education of young and adult people · Literacy · Paulo Freire

V. C. G. Nery (*) · T. A. B. Reis Federal University of Alfenas (UNIFAL-MG), Alfenas/MG, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] R. de Fátima Gonçalves Campinas State University (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil E. Orofino Federal University of Pará (UFPA), Pará, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_10

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10.1 Education of Young and Adult People: Regulatory Frameworks In Brazil, numerous national programs that address the issue of teaching adults to read and write can be found. However, despite the efforts, it is known that the illiteracy rate among people over 15 (fifteen) years of age is still very high in the country. According to the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad), carried out in 2014 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and made available on the Ministry of Education (MEC) website, the illiteracy rate among Brazilians who are over 15 years of age was close to 8.3% (13.2 million people) on the date of the survey, which allows IBGE to state that in comparison with the rate in 2001, there was a decrease of 4.3 percentage points in the indicator, which represents around 2.5 million people. In addition, based on those figures, it was possible to verify that the highest illiteracy rate is found in the northern and northeastern regions of Brazil, as well as the fact that the largest number of illiterate people is over their 50s and live mainly in low-income rural areas. Such facts allow us to recognize that the consequences of school exclusion are directly connected with different socioeconomic factors. However, it is projected by the Ministry of Education that this number will be reduced in the next generations due to the universalization of basic education and the increase in access to elementary education for children and adolescents, in addition to a greater guarantee of the right to education (Brasil 2017). Given the reality presented, it is important to highlight the need for more persistent discussions in the field of education for the young and adults. It is not just a simple educational issue aimed at establishing practices and/or courses for young people and adults but rather the need for more effective public policies that could pay a historical debt of national responsibility that is being emphasized herein. We understand that one of the ways of recognizing the individual as an important person in the construction process of history is the possibility of learning to read and write his/her own words. According to Almeida (2006), reading and writing are instruments that enable mediation between socially produced goods and services, such as health, safety, and work, among others. However, more than having access to reading and writing, it is necessary to learn how to use those literacy skills for the acquisition of rights, as we live in a society that is historically excluding, and those rights are not yet fully guaranteed. In view of this, we must consider the fact that the modern school was [...] thought as a universalized system of education, created under the assumptions of Modernity and supported by the idea that progress is possible and education is a means to achieve it. The classical formative ideal, influenced by the Enlightenment philosophy, states that knowledge empowers, liberates and makes us better and that access to culture and democratized schooling for all is the way to suppress social inequalities, while promoting access to universal values. (Toledo 2009, p.13)

However, as stated by Toledo (2009), even after more than 100 years, those ideals have not yet been fully achieved, and universal access to education is far from

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being accomplished. It is known that we still have great deficiencies to be overcome both in the educational field and in the social sphere, as mentioned above. It is important to highlight that technological advances as well as social interactions based on technologies demand greater knowledge of reading and writing (Almeida 2006, p.39). We reiterate, therefore, the fact that we live in a society that has been through constant transformations and significant changes that demand and expand the need to use reading and writing, thus demanding continuous update from people. Furthermore, although the numbers from the National Household Sample Survey point to greater access to schooling and literacy, it does not mean that reading and writing skills have been achieved, a fact that demonstrates that there is a large number of people who do not perform simple activities that require the use of reading and writing. These people are those who, according to data presented by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), are considered functionally illiterate. According to Toledo (2009, p.13), The definition of literacy has undergone significant changes in recent decades. In 1958 a person was considered literate when they could read or write a simple sentence, but today, with the advancement of communication technologies, the modernization of societies and the increase in social and political participation, these skills are no longer sufficient. UNESCO defines that a literate person is one capable of reading and writing in different social contexts and demands as well as using these skills to continue learning and developing throughout life, both in and outside school. Based on this new way of conceiving literacy, UNESCO suggests the adoption of the concept of Functional Literacy, which indicates that, in addition to having reading and writing skills, a person must know how to use them by processing different texts in different contexts and communicative situations.

In order for a better understanding of the concept of “functional illiteracy,” the definition presented by UNESCO (2009, p.61) is the one used herein, which states that “functional literate is the person capable of using reading and writing skills to face the demands of their social context as well as using them to continue learning and developing throughout life.” Such an issue has been widely discussed, given the quality of the educational process offered by school and the idea that the important thing “is not simply whether people know how to read and write, but also what they are capable of doing with those skills” (UNESCO 2009, p.61). The information presented by UNESCO (2009) also points to written language as a cultural instrument that will regulate people’s lives in society, defining and determining social relationships. In this understanding, language plays an important role in defining and interfering with the roles we take or are assigned to in the most different spaces and activities. Therefore, it is important to master written language as information and knowledge are produced and recorded through it and also directed to promote access to and interaction with cultural practices. From that perspective, UNESCO signals the urgency of reflecting on and thinking about the ways of conducting the literacy process. Several discussions have been raised toward the need to rethink adult education, and some of these discussions,

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such as those presented at the World Conference on Education for All (UNESCO 2009) and at the V International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA), which took place in Hamburg (1997), have been playing an important role with regard to the right to literacy for young and adults. Those are international events that reiterate “everyone’s right to education throughout life” (UNESCO 2009, p.67). [...] In the last sixty years, those conferences are the ones that debated and indicated the great global guidelines and policies on adult education for the period between one conference and the next - and, in some more troubled moments, the ones that prevented the disappearance of Education of the Young and Adults from political agendas in several countries. (UNESCO 2016, p.9)

The Third Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE) states that “most countries have not reached the Education for All goal of achieving a 50% improvement in adult literacy levels by 2015” (UNESCO 2016). This way, “achieving proficiency in adult literacy and basic skills remains a high priority in the vast majority of countries, regardless of their income status” (UNESCO 2016). In order to achieve such a goal, those documents state that literacy for the young and adults is [...] a strategic territory to face exclusion and social inequality and, in this sense, guarantee human rights, citizen participation, the appreciation of cultural diversity, solidarity among peoples as well as non-discrimination. However, the broad notion of literacy proposed in those documents - understood as a uniquely effective instrument for learning, accessing and elaborating information, and also for participation in one’s own culture and in the world culture - is not materialized in many of the literacy programs and practices implemented in our country [Brazil] (67–68).

UNESCO (2009) also declares that there are different decisions that permeate the way the literacy process is conducted, which involves [...] a set of procedures pertinent to the preparation of the physical and social environment of the educational center or school, the literacy classes, the planning and routines necessary for the learning of reading, writing and their uses by young people and adults. It also implies the reassessment of practice in light of the theoretical-methodological guidelines suggested by the academic production, the selection of books and teaching materials that consistently support the pedagogical work; the permanent training of literacy teachers; the diagnosis of students’ knowledge and needs, as well as the analysis of the learning processes that they experience. (UNESCO 2009)

In this sense, we would like to present the focus of conducting the literacy process from Paulo Freire’s emancipatory and dialogic perspective, which understands reading as the act of reading the world from learning words. This idea breaks the mechanical, repetitive vision of simply decoding words, which is so impregnated in adult literacy as it advocates that the learning of words should help you to think about your own world from a critical and emancipatory lens. In Freire’s view (2014, p.98), it is necessary to promote education based on the idea of literacy that aims to consciously master those techniques. “It is about understanding what you read, and write about what you understand.” This perspective goes far beyond the concern with an environment and/or a literacy structure only, as

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it is much more guided by the understanding of how the process takes place by those who are responsible for it: in this case, by both students and educators. Therefore, we understand that adult education must be guided by the stimulus to reading and by the learning of socially organized knowledge. In addition, it is the duty of the state to foster autonomous and critical readers, who are capable of discussing fundamental issues to human education by granting access to instrumental knowledge in order for them to consider their world and life experiences. In the present text, that theme is discussed based on a framework that understands the importance of neither reducing the literacy process to the coding of letters nor making a copy of the children’s format. We understand that working with highly complex texts, for instance, the so-called universal literary classics, raises universal discussions that are inherent in human beings such as pain, life, death, happiness, sadness, war, and forgiveness, among others. That would be the urgency we would like to problematize in order to contribute to the debate over thinking about ways of conducting the literacy process for young and adult people.

10.2 Paulo Freire Beyond Decoding Paulo Freire was an educator concerned with the literacy process that was linked to the democratization of culture. He thought of the process of reading and writing as an introduction to that democratization with the individual of curiosity, invention, and claim at the center of the debate. In this process, according to Freire, the act of creation is essential to triggering other creative acts: In fact, after the hardships of a day at work or a day without a job, only with a lot of patience is it possible to tolerate lessons that speak of a WING — “Pedro saw the wing” — “The wing is the bird’s”. Also, lessons that speak of Eves and grapes to men who sometimes know just a few Eves and have never eaten grapes. “Eve saw the grape.” (Freire 2015, p.100)

In his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2017), the author defines the stages of the literacy process that are necessarily linked to the themes of daily life of the individuals involved. According to him, In the literacy stage, if education that is problematizing and communicative seeks and investigates the “generative word”, in post-literacy it seeks and investigates the “generative theme”. In a liberating and no longer “banking” view of education, its syllabus no longer involves purposes to be imposed on the people. On the contrary, they start and are born from the people in dialogue with educators and reflect their yearnings and hopes. Hence the investigation of the theme as the starting point of the educational process, as a starting point of its dialogicity. (Freire, 2017, p.102)

The concept of literacy defended by this educator, with which we agree, is in line with the political process of the struggle for citizenship, which means that for him, it is essential to get to know the social nature of language acquisition so that the

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awareness that there is no “neutral literacy, a pure spelling drill started from the language of educators and not from students’ is raised” (Freire, 2013, p.183). Freire (2013, p.76) already pointed out that those who seek adult literacy courses want to learn to write and read sentences, phrases, and words; they want to be literate. In this sense, reading and writing words necessarily involve reading the world, which is prior to reading words as people are already in the world, with the world and with others. As long as the literacy process fails to recognize this fundamental element, making proper use of the reading and writing instrument will be pedagogically and socially incomplete.1 In his book Pedagogy of Hope (2013), through an absolutely new, progressive, and renewing political-pedagogical language for that time (the book was first published in 1992), the author Paulo Freire proposed that adult education in the mucambo areas (housing made of thatch and mud and covered with dry straw from coconut trees) would have to be based on the awareness of the reality of the literacy students’ everyday life and not reduced to simple mechanical and uncompromising literacy whatsoever. The contents, then, should emerge from that experience and reality (Freire 2013, p.125). In order for students to be interested in reading, it is important that educators are readers as well and demonstrate coherence between their practice and the world of life and are thus able to promote the development of the necessary skills for learning to read, as Freire and Macedo (1990) stated: Reading is an intelligent, yet difficult, demanding, but a rewarding operation. No one reads or studies authentically if they do not take the critical form of the subject of curiosity, a subject of reading, a subject of the process of getting to know where they are inserted before the text or object of curiosity. Reading is to seek to create an understanding of what it is you just read; hence, among other fundamental points, the importance of the correct teaching to read and write. The reason is that teaching to read is to engage in a creative experience around understanding and communication. (Freire 2001 p.261)

Freire and Macedo (1990) point to some conceptions of reading that can help us understand how the process of learning to read and write has been taking place. They claim that the positivist approach understands the reader as an object, the approach to reading from a cognitive point of view aims at the mechanical learning of reading skills by creating a group of functional literacy students, the utilitarian approach legitimizes the construction of meanings based on people’s problem-solving skills, and the romantic approach to reading emphasizes the affective aspect as it understands reading as an experience of pleasure. In view of the definition of such reading approaches, Freire (1997) suggests that a common point between them is [...] that all ignore the role of language as a force of the greatest importance in the construction of human subjectivities. That means they ignore the way in which language can confirm or reject the histories and life experiences of the people who use it. (Freire, 1997, p.97)

 For further discussion on Freire’s literacy concept, see the chapter by Vieira, in this book.

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In this sense, the author defends the emancipatory reading based on its creative and recreative aspect, which leads to individuals’ self-teaching and can result in their active stance on their context. “That makes the educator’s fundamental role to be holding a dialogue with the illiterates about concrete situations by offering them the means through which they can become literate” (Freire 2014, p.98). Therefore, it is necessary to think about an education based on and underpinned by stimulating the learning of reading and writing from a critical reflection, so that students are able to act as subjects in the world that fight for the end of social and cultural exclusion. Since the 1950s, in his writings from the work Education as a Practice of Freedom (2015), the author had already indicated the transforming potential of the world through the word, as long as it is understood by mankind in its proper meaning. According to him, To the extent that, although illiterate, man discovers the relativity of ignorance and wisdom and removes one of the foundations for their manipulation by false elites. Only then does literacy make sense. To the extent that implying in all this effort of reflection of man on themselves and on the world in which and with which they are, they discover “that the world is theirs too, that their work is not the penalty they pay for being man, but a way of loving — and helping the world to be better.” (Freire 2015, p.139–140)

Therefore, to think about literacy and the use of language from the Freirean perspective is to go beyond the mechanical decoding of techniques: it is to think about enabling students to communicate graphically, mastering such techniques in conscious terms, incorporating the discussions and their word and not just using the “visual and mechanical memorization of sentences, words, syllables, strayed from an existential universe — dead or semi-dead things — but in an attitude of creation and recreation. It implies self-teaching that can result in an interfering posture of man in his context” (Freire 2015, p.156). Since the 1960s, the work proposed by Paulo Freire allows us to carry out a literacy work by bringing high-complexity texts of the context to the classroom, unlike the work based on the use of booklets so criticized by him, as they deliver ready-­ made graphic signage to students. The proposal of working with literary classics, for example, can be used to expand reflection, critical thinking, and the formation of generative words to teach the language.

10.3 The Universal Classics and the Emancipatory Reading The justification for adult literacy work based on reading the classics of universal literature is that those are the works that awaken common human themes in people, such as love, hate, anger, hunger, sadness, and politics, among others. Such themes are universal as they are present in any context, time, and society. In this regard, there are studies on the comprehension of literary classics that help us understand and define them. For instance, particularly worth mentioning herein the studies of Ana Maria Machado, Italo Calvino, Leyla Perrone-Moises, and Harold Bloom.

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Literature has been around since primitive civilizations and was initially transmitted orally, as in the accounts of Homer’s Iliad. This way, it is possible to suggest that a classic with characteristics intrinsic to its time can arise through the reading and/or knowledge of another classic. The academic discussions about the literary classic theme follow different approaches. Some critics and researchers are in favor of the propagation of the classics, and there are those who are against that definition as they believe that such works stimulate ideological and political issues that foster the segregation of classes. However, we do not intend to define or direct this problem to a consonance of meanings but rather propose some reflections on the important social function that the reading of literary classics promotes in the young and adult literacy. As Machado (2009, p.15) states, “a classic is not an old and outdated book. It is timeless and does not go out of style.” Classical texts have the ability to be new in each reading and offer a unique way for readers to read and understand them, regardless of the historical period in which they were written. In his book Why Read the Classics, Italo Calvino presents 14 definitions of a classic text, and among them, he states that “a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it had to say” (Calvino 2007, p.11). Likewise, Perrone-Moises (2009, p.13) claims that “a literary work is still alive when it has readers.” It is a fact, therefore, that a literary classic crosses the timeline and the cultural and social boundaries to become contemporary and interesting in any time and/or context. The literary critic Harold Bloom, in his book The Western Canon, understands the existence of the canon due to the finitude of the human being. For him, it is because it is not possible to read all the available literary works that listing some of the works, the canons, was made necessary. The word canon comes from the Greek Kanon and referred to a rod that served as a rule of measurement, a model. According to Curtius (2013, p.319), only in the fourteenth century D.C., the term started to be used in literature to refer to a list of writers. As for the term classic, it comes from the Latin Classos2 that referred to the division of the noble social classes (first class) and the proletariat (fifth class). According to Curtius (2013), the term was initially used in literature by Alexandrian philologists in order to choose the works to be read in grammar schools. Later, the author Aulo Gelio also uses the term classic in his work Noctes Atticae (volume XIX, 8, 15), which Curtius (2013, p.312) translated as follows: “Any orator or poet, at least belonging to that older group, that is, a first-class writer and contributor, not a proletarian.” Based on this excerpt, it is possible to state the reason why reading was restricted to those who had greater purchasing power for centuries, as it was an instrument that granted power over a marginalized class.

 The term Classos was used as it was used by Machado (2009, p.20) but also the terms Classis and Classicus as they were found in other authors such as Curtius (2013) and Perrone-Moises (2009) with the same meaning suggested by Machado (2009). 2

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We have not found any record that indicates the use of classic or canon as correct or incorrect when referring to literary works among the authors studied and cited here. We can mention Machado (2009) and Calvino (2007), who in their works use the term classic, and Bloom (1995) and Perrone-Moises (2009), who use the term canon, as examples. Returning to the writings of Curtius (2013), it was observed that the term classic is used to differentiate between authors throughout history, while the term canon is present in three historical periods: the ecclesiastical canon (which were the works written by authors considered as doctors of the church), the medieval canon (which referred to a literary tradition), and the modern canon (referring to classicism, a period in which some peculiarities of Greek and Roman writers were rescued). Therefore, after such considerations and reflections, the question that might arise is who is currently given the authority to classify a work as a classic? According to Bloom (1995, p.495), “writers, artists and composers themselves determine canons and bridge the gap between strong precursors and strong successors.” However, there are also other categories that can elect a literary work as classic, and Moreira (2003) cites universities, professors, publishers, critics, and literary organizations as competent for that purpose. Nowadays, the so-called canon-busters3 question the existence of a list of authors/ texts from the past. For them, as education was the privilege of a few, defending the literary classics is a way to perpetuate the elitization of knowledge. However, our discussion herein is based on the appreciation and propagation of classical literature due to the indisputable quality of content and, in particular, to those historically excluded from access to such a cultural asset: the illiterate adults: At this point, people are often victims of a curious clouding. They claim that others are undoubtedly entitled to certain fundamental goods, such as housing, food, education, health, things that no one who is well-educated today admits to be the privilege of minorities, as they are in Brazil. But do they think that their poor fellows would have the right to read Dostoevsky or listen to Beethoven’s quartets? (Candido, 2011, p.174)

Authors and critics who are against the classics also raise a discussion about the male and European hegemony of these works. By reiterating what has already been presented here about the little access to education for a large part of the population (the poor, women, and black people, among others who are marginalized), Machado (2009, p.133) states that “[...] perhaps this masculine and Eurocentric canon only reflects the fact that there have been more white, male and European readers to date.” Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that just promoting access for young people and adults to schooling and classic works is not enough. It is also necessary to make sure that reading and writing in this period of schooling allow students to think critically and take a stand in society based on what they think, what they live, what they reflect on, and what they talk about in life around such works. Thereby, we defend the work with that highly complex material as a means to carry out critical and emancipatory literacy for young and adult people for two  Term found in Perrone-Moises (2009, p.196)

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reasons: to provide them with access to cultural goods that have been historically excluded from the daily lives of those people and, moreover, so that people who have been historically discriminated against for not knowing the written code can say their own words and put themselves on an equal position in the struggle for the right to meaningful literacy.

10.4 Final Considerations In order to close this discussion, we would like to emphasize that the literacy proposal from the perspective defended in this article is based on a human vision of nondiscrimination of people due to their educational and/or social background. Paulo Freire, as a humanist educator, taught us the need for a coherent education in regard to the demands of a democratic society and developed a radical conception of teaching that aimed at moving away from traditional and mechanistic approaches in view of an emancipatory literacy. In his proposal, the essential values for human education such as dialogue, solidarity, social responsibility, the common good, and critical spirit, among others, must be considered. That perception is not neutral and comes from a conception of education, subject, and society. Likewise, the choice of the material to be used in the actions with the adult audience is also a non-neutral political choice, and for this reason, we justify the choice of universal classics as a form of access and resistance to what has always been offered to them. Throughout the study, we came across many questions around the reading of a classic work, such as why are not classic books part of the readings of most students, particularly in young people and adult education? Although we do not have all the answers, we do have some indicators regarding the long and persistent process of education in which only a tiny portion of individuals had access to this high-complexity culture, since reading has historically always been linked to the access of a few, as it symbolizes power and, consequently, could “threaten” that minority that controls knowledge and its access and use. We also tried to bring to the table some small considerations about the need and importance of continuing with the discussions around this theme, especially when it comes to the education of young and adult people. We understand that depriving those people of access to the list of classics would mean to exclude them from the most fascinating stories that serve to dream, expand vocabulary, think, rethink, resist what is historically and socially imposed, and read, simply because reading is more than a right rather it is a form of resistance. Reading classical literature to start working with literacy from an emancipatory and Freirean perspective, especially in the education of young and adult people, becomes essential for the promotion of a critical and autonomous education. We understand that such a proposal can contribute to discussions in the scope of public policies and meet the social and human demands, which are so necessary to live in a less difficult world.

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References ALMEIDA, M. L. S. Sujeitos não alfabetizados: sujeitos de direitos, necessidades e desejos. In: SOARES, L. (Org.) Aprendendo com a Diferença: Estudos e Pesquisas na Educação de Jovens e Adultos. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2006. p. 39–63. BLOOM, H. O Cânone Ocidental. 2. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 1995. BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Analfabetismo no país cai de 11,5% para 8,7% nos últimos oito anos. Available from : http://portal.mec.gov.br/ultimas-­noticias/204-­10899842/19110-­ analfabetismo-­no-­pais-­cai-­de-­115-­para-­87-­nos-­ultimos-­oito-­anos. Access: 2 mar 2022. BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional. LDB 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996. CALVINO, I. Por que ler os clássicos. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007. CANDIDO, A. Vários escritos. 5. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Ouro sobre azul, 2011. CASTELLS, M. Fluxos, Redes e Identidades: uma teoria crítica da sociedade informacional. In: CASTELLS, M. et al. Nuevas perspectivas críticas em educación. Barcelona: Paidós, 1994. CURTIUS, E. R. Literatura Europeia e Idade Média Latina. Tradução por Teodoro Cabral. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2013. FLECHA, R. Compartiendo palabras. Barcelona: Paidós, 1997. FREIRE, P. Professora sim, tia não: Cartas a quem ousa ensinar. São Paulo: Editora Olho d ́Água, 1997. FREIRE, P.  Carta de Paulo Freire aos professores. Estudos avançados, São Paulo, v.15, n. 42, May/Aug, 2001. FREIRE, P. Pedagogia da esperança [recurso eletrônico]: um reencontro com a pedagogia do oprimido. 1ª edição. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2013. FREIRE, P. Educação e Mudança. 36ª Edição. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2014. FREIRE, P. Educação como prática da liberdade. [recurso eletrônico]. 1ª edição. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2015. FREIRE, P. Pedagogia do oprimido. 63ª edição. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2017. FREIRE, P.; MACEDO, D. Alfabetização: Leitura do mundo, leitura da palavra. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1990. GIROTTO, C. G. G. S.; SOUZA, R. J. de. Estratégia de leitura: para ensinar alunos a compreender o que leem. In: Souza, R. J et al. Ler e compreender: estratégias de leitura. Campinas: Mercado das Letras, 2010. IBGE - Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Educação. Taxa de analfabetismo das pessoas de 15 anos ou mais de idade, por sexo – Brasil  – 2007/2014. Available from: https:// brasilemsintese.ibge.gov.br/educacao/taxa-­de-­analfabetismo-­das-­pessoas-­de-­15-­anos-­ou-­ mais.html. Access: 02 Mar 2022 MACHADO, A.  M. Como e por que ler os clássicos universais desde cedo. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2009. MELLO, R. R. de; et al. Tertúlia Literária Dialógica. In: CORRÊA, E.; Cunha, E.; Carvalho, A. (Re)conhecer diferenças, construir resultados. Brasília: UNESCO, 2004. p. 129–138. MOREIRA, M. E. Cânone e cânones: um plural singular. Revista Língua e Literatura: Limites e Fronteiras, UFSM, n. 26, 89–94, 2003. Available from: https://periodicos.ufsm.br/letras/ article/view/11883/7310. Access: 15 mar 2022 PERRONE-MOISÉS, L. Altas Literaturas. 2. ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009. TOLEDO, L. S. Alfabetismo funcional, linguagem e inclusão social. Leituras Transdisciplinares de Telas e Textos, Belo Horizonte, v. 5, n. 10, p. 10–22, 2009. Available from : http://www. periodicos.letras.ufmg.br/index.php/txt/article/view/10047. Access: 15 mar 2022 UNESCO. Alfabetização de jovens e adultos no Brasil: lições da prática. Brasília: UNESCO, 2008. 212 p. Available from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000162640. Access: 04 mar 2022

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UNESCO. Terceiro relatório global sobre aprendizagem e educação de adultos. Brasília: UNESCO, 2016. Available from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247056. Access: 04 mar 2022 UNESCO. Alfabetização de jovens e adultos no Brasil: lições da prática. Brasília: UNESCO, 2009. 212 p. Available from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000162640. Access: 04 mar 2022

Chapter 11

The Challenges of Bildung in the Anthropocene in the Relationship Between the Oppressed and the Literacy Karina Limonta Vieira

Abstract  Bildung means transformation of the subject’s relationship with the world, the others, and himself/herself, linked with the long history of human action on Earth. However, the political, social, and ecological challenges faced by the human being are many in the transformation process in the Anthropocene. The geopolitical challenges such as migration, hunger, and poverty lead to reflection on the condition of the oppressed in the global scenario before the unequal situation of Bildung and literacy. This Bildung requires quality education, whose literacy ressignifies, and transforms the condition of the oppressed in their awareness and responsibility before the causes and consequences of their actions on the Earth. In this chapter, the discussion about the challenges of Bildung in the Anthropocene starts with an introduction to the topics that are going to be expanded in the chapter. After that, an idea of the Anthropocene and the place of human beings on the planet is conveyed, followed by the elements and condition of the oppressed human being. After that, a discussion on Bildung as a transformation dimension is proposed, and literacy is analyzed as responsibility for action, so that the conclusions of this chapter can be drawn. Keywords  Bildung · Anthropocene · Oppressed · Literacy

11.1 Introduction The planet and the world are constantly in geological, political, economic, cultural, and social transformation. Transforming is inherent to the human being’s condition, and becoming human is remarkably a constant construction in his/her action on Earth. As a result, the becoming human receives external influences that transform the subject’s relationship with the world, others and himself/herself, and the Earth. In the historicity and the transformation of the constitutive process of Bildung, the K. L. Vieira (*) Freie Universität Berlin (FU – Berlin), Berlin, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Del Ré et al. (eds.), From Discriminating to Discrimination, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13544-6_11

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individual and singular human being is the main agent, situated with the other in the world. Therefore, the challenges of Bildung in the Anthropocene currently involve the understanding of the oppressed and the responsibility on human action in the literacy. The debate in this chapter arises from another debate (Vieira 2021) already started on the relationship between Bildung and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1980, 2005). The formative elements of praxis for freedom in Freire’s book show how Bildung as an educational praxis constitutes a process of acquiring knowledge or skills and how the transformation of the subject’s relationship with the world, others, and himself/herself contributes to the overcoming of the condition of being oppressed. However, the conception of oppressed in Freire’s work was conceived in the 1960s, and today, it is necessary to think about this oppressed person in the face of the Anthropocene challenges, which also constitute challenges for Bildung. The aim of the chapter is to situate Bildung before the challenges of human action on the Earth in the condition of the oppressed and the responsibility of literacy. Therefore, several questions are relevant to this debate, such as follows: Which dimension to approach for the formation of the oppressed human being in the Anthropocene? Are praxis, the problematization of the teacher-student contradiction, dialogicity, and collaboration concepts reflecting the condition of the free oppressed? How can we think currently about the Freire’s conception of the oppressed in the global world? To answer these questions, the chapter presents the following structure: Anthropocene and the place of the human being on the planet, the elements and condition of the oppressed human being, Bildung as a transforming dimension, and literacy as a responsibility for action. The crises in the Anthropocene challenge Bildung to a literacy that presents a new condition of the oppressed in their conscience and individual and social responsibility in today’s world.

11.2 Anthropocene and the Place of the Human Being on the Planet Anthropocene is linked with the long history of human action on Earth (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000), as well as to the hominization process, that is, his/her ability to develop and to transform his/her own environment (Wulf 2008). In the hominization process, there is an evolution of becoming human, in which multiple interrelationships and interactions are found among genetic, ecological, praxic, cerebral, social, and cultural factors (Morin 1973). The process of becoming human is a constant construction, in which the human being plays a relevant role in action on Earth, as the hominization process allows transforming both their environment and their own condition. In this hominization process, the human being takes control of nature and becomes the main force of its transformation, but they also become unable of

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governing a world under the influence of this transformation (Trischler 2016) which is accompanied by changes related to climatic, biogenetic, and technological aspects. Changes caused by human beings interfere in nature, causing fires, pollution, land exploitation, and food waste. Furthermore, they also cause biogenetic transformations such as CRISPR (clustered regularly interfaced short palindromic repeat) and technological transformations with the development of fields such as artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics (Wulf 2020a). But changes also cause natural disasters, renewable energies, depletion of natural resources, desertification, ecocide, widespread pollution, migration, and social and environmental injustice (Issberner and Léna 2018). These transformations make the Anthropocene more visible, enabling an urgent debate on its environmental and human consequences. The action of human beings on Earth has been constituted from the dichotomous European view of nature versus culture, and the consequence of this dichotomous logic leads to the domination of nature. These actions take to uncertainty, sudden changes, and ecological disasters capable of generating health, social, political, and economic crises (Beck 1986); moreover, they also take to geoscientific and political-social uncertainties in the organization of human societies, for instance, the twenty-first century has been marked by a series of population migrations due to the impossibility of continuing to live in certain geographic areas (Wallehnhorst and Pierron 2019). Risks are like uncertainties that are socially created, which leaves the population vulnerable due to geopolitical, economic, and social susceptibility and entails society at risk (Beck 1986). The Anthropocene concept describes a new geological era, in which human being exerts the most important geological force (Crutzen 2002). It has also had considerable repercussions for the social and cultural sciences such as sociology, history, political science, law, media studies, human geography, literary studies, cultural anthropology, and art studies. The interest of the social and cultural sciences is not surprising, since the Anthropocene is not just about Earth but also about people, their society, and their culture and an anthropology that is interested in the natural sciences (Folkers 2020). The Anthropocene directs us to a renewed thought of transformation in relation to awareness and responsibility for the environmental impact of human activities on Earth. This suggests learning to understand the human being’s place in relation to oneself, others, and nonhuman entities. It is necessary to think again about the human condition. The current world requires the formation of human beings that makes it possible to create narratives and transformations, taking into account the redefinition of the role and action of human beings in view of the complexity of Earth and the social consequences of their actions and the understanding of the human being’s place on Earth (Wallenhorst 2020). In this way, Leinfelder (2013) proposes that human beings assume social and individual responsibility for the Anthropocene. The way for their existence in which education is considered as one of the transformative tools, and according to Wulf (2020b), the environmental, technological, and genetic impacts allow us to reflect on how we understand human beings and their education in the Anthropocene in

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view of the challenges present in the globalized world, thinking also from a historical-anthropological perspective for changes in the understanding of the human being and in Bildung, mainly, in the impact that Bildung will have on the future formation of children and young people. Thus, the Anthropocene also dictates circumstances of risk and uncertainty, requiring action and reflection on the constitution of the oppressed in the current global society. If the strict conditions of society are taken into account, it can be said that the oppressed comes across numerous obstacles in the literacy process. Recovering Freire’s concept of the oppressed helps to reflect on the condition of the oppressed human being in the global world and allows for reflection on a broader literacy that requires a transformative action for the challenges of the Anthropocene.

11.3 The Elements and Condition of the Oppressed Human Being The circumstances of the Anthropocene dictate to consider the social effects in the global world that affect the formation of human beings. Climatic, technological, and biological changes cause changes that are migratory due to extreme climate, technological due to the replacement of humans by robots and biological due to the genetic change of the human being. These changes also take place in meaning in relation to the constitution of human beings and their condition in the current world (Wulf 2020b; Grunwald 2021). But they oppress the human being who needs to migrate to another place and find himself/herself in a vulnerable condition (homelessness, lack of schools, unemployment, lack of water and food, and violence, among others) due to climate and geopolitical changes (Thomas et al. 2013). The current oppressed invites a return to Paulo Freire’s conception of the oppressed conceived in his work, Pedagogia do Oprimido (1980, 2005). But it also invites, according to Costa, Santos, and Vale (2020), to discuss: Who are the oppressed today? This conception requires responsibility to situate and understand the work from the historical and cultural context in which it was produced. Paulo Freire developed his studies in the education field and, mainly, in the 1960s, a period when Brazilian citizens did not vote, as he understood the literacy program as a step toward the democratization of Brazil. Literacy in Brazil aimed not only at acquiring reading and writing skills but also at raising awareness (Vieira 2021). This work criticized manipulative and alienating education. Freire (1980) points out three elements that lead the human being to find himself/herself in the condition of the oppressed, the condition of the oppressed human being, banking concept of education, and antidialogics. The oppressed human being lives in a world of oppression in the conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed, in which the fear of freedom becomes greater and the oppressed do not feel capable of running the risk of assuming it. According to Freire (1980), farmers want agrarian reform and land to become owners or bosses of new employees. This duality reflects already a consolidated social and cultural structure that, as the oppressed, experience countless violent forms in the vocation

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of “being less,” that is, the oppressed socially suffers discrimination in view of their social condition to “be more.” Banking concept of education is a type of relationship in which those who think they are wiser donate knowledge to those who know nothing. It means that they absolutize the ignorance, oppression, and alienation of the other, according to Freire (1980). In this way, “banking” concept of education becomes an instrument of oppression, because education becomes an act of depositing, in which students are the depositories and the teacher the depositor. Instead of communicating, the educator makes announcements and deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat (Freire 2005). The student, as well as an empty vault, receives deposits of knowledge from the teacher who is the holder of the word. This education encourages contradiction, as it intends to maintain the division between those who know and those who do not know. It consequently leads to dichotomy between the oppressed and the oppressors. According to the theory of antidialogical action, antidialogics serves as oppression (Freire 2005). Antidialogics is characterized by conquest, dividing in order to maintain oppression, manipulation, and cultural invasion. The oppressor’s first need is the conquest of the other, which happens through the media, that is, a way to mythologize the world. As a way to weaken the oppressed, then the oppressor makes division, as it creates a division between people and causes deep insecurity in terms of maintaining the status quo and preserving the power of the dominators. Manipulation is the instrument of conquest and tends to anesthetize the popular masses so that they cannot think. “In this phenomenon, the invaders penetrate the cultural context of another group, in disrespect of the latter’s potentialities; they impose their own view of the world upon those they invade and inhibit the creativity of the invaded by curbing their expression” (Freire 2005, p.152). These three elements that lead the human being to find himself/herself in the condition of the oppressed finally present the contradiction between oppressors and the oppressed, the “banking” concept of education as an instrument of oppression, and the antidialogics that manipulates and oppresses human beings. This means that the educational process includes two dimensions: the gnoseological dimension (knowledge) and the political dimension (intervention in reality). Even though in Freire’s critical proposition in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1980, 2005), there is a search for liberation through praxis, the problematization of the teacher-student contradiction, dialogics, and collaboration, the human being currently lives in the condition of the oppressed. For Freire (1980), poverty, hunger, and its consequences, such as illiteracy and people who cannot achieve “being more,” are the elements that make people oppressed. The circumstances of risk and uncertainty made by human action dictate reflections on the condition of the oppressed that is beyond the gnoseological and political dimensions, because the world in the Anthropocene demands that new dimensions be contemplated. Which dimension to approach for the formation of the oppressed human being in the Anthropocene? Bildung as a formative role in the new scenario can be an alternative for understanding the limits and identifying the potentials for human transformation.

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11.4  Bildung as a Transformation Dimension The concept of the oppressed makes a criticism of manipulative and alienating education, in which the “banking” concept of education becomes human being influenceable and adaptable. However, this alienating formation leads to the formation and massification of the human being in a standardized collectivity and without autonomy (Horkheimer 1985). Totally disconnected from reality, these human beings lose their connection with a greater whole and life; besides, they are seen as passive beings (Freire 1980). Therefore, Freire (1980) inserts human beings in his praxis involved in problematization and dialogue, and as a critical alternative to the “banking” concept of education, the “problem-forming dialogue” is proposed, so that problematization releases the processes of awareness among the oppressed, so that they recognize the contradictions of their lifeworld and fight against it. According to Lütjen (2015), awareness arises when the people meet as partners of dialogue and this process of awareness to consent that the people act as subjects. In this regard, the human being becomes who he/she is in his action (Humboldt 1980) and in the experiences linked to life and the world (Horkheimer 1985). In this dialogue, reflection and action are instruments of human beings’ release in reflection and for the transformation of their lives. An ethos of transformation, in which autonomy is seen as a requirement, a social and intersubjective task to the person, that is, as a social condition (Reichenbach 1999). The principle of Freire’s pedagogy (1980) is that education can never be neutral. Either it is an instrument for the liberation of the human being, or it is an instrument of its domestication of its training for oppression. For Uljens (2002), freedom in education concerns the human ability to learn or change through experience for the subject to achieve autonomy.1 In this sense, it is necessary to develop in the search for creativity and awareness (Freire 1980). By problematizing human training, people learn to see the world as a reality in process and in transformation (Freire 1980). It is the teacher’s role to encourage students to think critically, reflect on reality, and be able to lead to problem-solving. The problematization of human training considers the student/person as a subject and not as an object of oppressive pedagogy and allows reality to be seen as changeable (Lütjen 2015). The essence of dialogue is the word that involves reflection and action. Are the praxis, the problematization of the teacher-student contradiction, the dialogicity, and the collaboration conceptions reflecting the condition for freedom of the oppressed? How can we currently think about Freire’s conception of the oppressed in the global world? The oppressed as a product of capitalism, proposed by Freire, currently require an understanding of the oppressed in the Anthropocene. The actions of human beings lead to resignification of the responsibility before the complexity of the planet and the consequences of their actions.

 For another discussion on the topic of education and how it impacts the subjects, please check the Chap. 4 by Vasconcelos & Vieira and also the Chap. 5 by Lanz, in this volume. 1

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Bildung, then, cannot be understood simply as the process of acquiring knowledge or skills but rather as a transformation of the subject’s relationship with the world, others, and himself/herself. Bildung concerns the self-determined, autonomous, and free human being: free to think, to think of a better life and a better world, who knows how to critically position himself/herself in the face of the world becomes a thinking citizen, based on his/her own ideas. The aim of Bildung is to make you a free and thinking being (Möllmann 2011). Therefore, in the constitutive process of Bildung, the individual human being is the main agent, situated with the other in the world, the human being who makes himself/herself and unfolds in his/her individuality and with others in a means of teaching measures and processes in common of active development in the mediated relationship of a person with the world and with the self, emphasizes Schaefer (1995). The human being is a being, from the beginning, which needs formation and is capable of formation, according to Wulf (2015), a Homo Formans. Therefore, in the transformation of human beings, they become capable of being trained in the face of the challenges of the global world. This means Bildung faces numerous challenges, as current oppressed human beings are facing uncertain challenges and crises, such as refugees, illiteracy (youth and adult illiteracy, second language learning, digital illiteracy), unemployment, hunger, and misery. Such problems occur oppression of human beings who do not fit into the standards of global quality of life. In this way, understanding which conditions oppress human beings in the Anthropocene means contextualizing the formation of human beings in the face of current challenges. Today, the oppressed are not only found in the dimensions of knowledge and politics, that is, learning to read and write to become aware of their world and their freedom, and it leads to improving the very oppressive conditions, such as migration, hunger, misery, and illiteracy. These are the same conditions listed by Paulo Freire, but the Anthropocene bias extends the perspective of capitalism to the justification that the responsible action of human being incites the causes and consequences for the oppressive conditions. Becoming aware of your world, however, is important to reflect on the meaning of your responsibility and action when becoming literate, implicating in considering formation with quality of life, well-being, and awareness of sustainability. One of the challenges of Bildung in the Anthropocene concerns literacy as a responsibility for action by young people and adults, and therefore, it gives new meaning to their condition of being oppressed before their conscious formation and responsible for their own action in the world. This means literacy cannot be reduced to knowledge only in their world but to increase awareness and social responsibility in the face of the challenges imposed by the Anthropocene.

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11.5 Literacy as Responsibility for Action According to German, English, Portuguese dictionaries, literacy is the ability to read and write. For Soares (2014), literacy designates both the process of acquisition of written language and its development. It constitutes the apprehension and understanding of meanings expressed in written language (reading) or expression of meanings through written language (writing) involving social aspects; therefore, literacy is not the same in all societies. However, the literacy concept is broader. Literacy also considers cultural, economic, and technological factors. Social reality requires individuals who know how to read and write but also know how to use reading and writing. Literacy can also be said as reading of world and reading of word, that is, the experience to change the world and to stay in contact with the world, as Freire and Macedo described it2 (1990). Above all, it is necessary to contextualize here at a global level, “at least 773 million young people and adults still cannot read and write and 250 million children are not managing to acquire basic literacy skills” (UNESCO 2021). For Richmond, Robinson, and Sachs-Israel (2009), problems of literacy result from the exclusion of young people and adults, as with low education, young people suffer from low qualifications to fully participate in their communities and societies. Literacy problems arise from the consequences of geopolitical crises, such as migration, hunger, and poverty, which consequently originate from the crisis generated by the action of human beings in the Anthropocene. Therefore, reflecting on the condition of the oppressed in the global scenario in face of the unequal situation of formation (Bildung) and literacy requires quality of education and quality of life in the educational process in order to create, through literacy, another meaning for the condition of the oppressed in their responsibility and his/her action in the face of the social consequences. Since literacy is an issue of equity and justice, the causes and consequences of literacy learning disadvantage are social responsibilities (Christie and Simpson 2010). Therefore, Richmond, Robinson, and Sachs-Israel (2009) explain that literacy also enables greater participation in the labor market, improves children’s health and nutrition, reduces poverty, and expands life opportunities, in addition to providing identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication between people in the digital and rapidly changing world. The UN Sustainable Development Goals aim at quality education, which expose the following: “Education liberates the intellect, unlocks the imagination and is fundamental for self-respect. It is the key to prosperity and opens a world of opportunities, making it possible for each of us to contribute to a progressive, healthy society. Learning benefits every human being and should be available to all” (UNDP 2015). To achieve this goal, one of the goals proposes the 4.6 Universal Literacy and Numeracy in which until 2030 all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, will achieve literacy and numeracy.

 For further discussion on literacy, please check the Chap. 10 by Nery et al., in this volume.

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Why do we think of literacy as a responsible action? Finally, literacy in the Anthropocene proposes a new meaning for the condition of the oppressed in their awareness and responsibility in the presence of their causes and consequences of their actions on Earth. The formation of human beings requires awareness and responsibility, so literacy is a means of transformative action that allows human beings to understand their actions in the world, as people are able to think on their actions and can choose how to act in the future. For Jonas (2006), responsibility means recognizing threats to the planet and to human beings, whose primary principle is to act in such a way that the effects of their action are compatible with the permanence of real human life on Earth. This means recognizing that we live in a global society, whose responsibility is not only based on humanitarian morality but on political, cultural, and economic relationships that require a new awareness of shared global responsibility (Hahn 2017).

11.6 Final Considerations The considerable challenges of Bildung in the Anthropocene currently face the relationship between the oppressed and literacy, in which the place of the human being on Earth, the elements and condition of the oppressed human being, Bildung as a transformative dimension, and literacy as a responsibility for action are important discussion points. The important place of human beings on Earth in the Anthropocene era shows how to understand human beings in the face of the current challenges of their formation, leading to an understanding of the oppressed in the global world. For that, one can conclude (a) the need to broaden Freire’s approach on oppressed human beings and (b) a responsible action which requires a joint action of all human beings. First, the condition of oppressed presented by Freire (1980) emphasizes that the human being is oppressed through the “banking” concept of education and antidialogics. However, the risk conditions of the Anthropocene point out that the circumstance of the oppressed dictates an approach beyond Freire’s gnoseological and political dimensions. Becoming aware of their world and finding freedom through praxis, human beings need to reflect upon the meaning of their responsibility and action, and this also implies considering formation with life quality, well-being, and awareness of sustainability. Secondly, the current actions of the human being in the world face serious challenges. At this moment, there is a need to act in favor of the environment, common well-being, collectivity, and cooperation and to show that these actions constitute from the view that every individual action is also a social action (Joas 2007). Thus, any human action can become possible oppression. We cannot just blame the capitalist system, an economic system, and make human beings victims of society, preserving human beings from their drastic actions in the world. Here one must take into consideration the role of human actions and finding paths for integrative formation, that transforms these actions and becomes human beings is critical, reflective,

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educating, and integrated in their world. The future remains uncertain because of climate change, pandemics, economic crisis, social exclusion, racism, oppression of women, generational conflict, and much more (UNESCO 2021). For this, according to Leinfelder (2013), the transformation of society in the Anthropocene implicates the relationship between thinking, lifestyles, and individual and social actions, which must be based on available knowledge along with responsibility, personal experience, normative thinking reflected, and personal well-being.

References BECK, U. Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1986. CHRISTIE, F.; SIMPSON, A. Literacy and Social Responsibility. Multiple Perspectives. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2010. COSTA, A.; SANTOS, S.; VALE, E. 50 anos da Pedagogia do Oprimido: quem são os oprimidos hoje? [50 Years of Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Who are the oppressed today?] Olhar de professor, v. 23, p.1–15, 2020. CRUTZEN, P.; STOERMER, E.  The Anthropocene. Global Change Newsletter, v. 41, p.17–18, 2000. CRUTZEN, P. Geology of mankind. Nature, v. 415, 23, 2002. FOLKERS, A. Was ist das Anthropozän und was wird es gewesen sein? Ein kritischer Überblick über neue Literatur zum kontemporären Erdzeitalter [What is the Anthropocene and what will it have been? A critical overview of new literature on the contemporary geological age]. N.T.M., v. 28, p.589–604, 2020. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00048-­020-­00269-­1 FREIRE, P. Pedagogia do Oprimido. [Pedagogy of the Oppressed]. 8th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1980. FREIRE, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New  York/London: Continuum, 2005. FREIRE, P.; MACEDO, D. Alfabetização. Leitura de mundo e leitura da palavra. [Literacy. World reading and word reading]. 4th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1990. GRUNWALD, A. Living Technology. Philosophy and Ethics at the Crossroads Between Life and Technology. Singapore: Jenny Stanford Publishing, 2021. HORKHEIMER, M. Gesammelte Schriften. Vorträge und Aufzeichnungen 1949–1973 [Collected Writings. Lectures and recordings 1949–1973]. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1985. Band 7. HUMBOLDT, W. von. Werke in fünf Bänden [Works in five volumes]. In: FLITNER, A.; GIEL, K. (Eds.). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980. ISSBERNER, L.-R.; LENA, P.  Antropoceno: os desafios essenciais de um debate científico [Anthropocene: the essential challenges of a scientific debate]. O Correio da UNESCO, v. 2, p.7–10, 2018. JOAS, H. (ed.) Lehrbuch der Soziologie [Sociology textbook]. 3rd ed. Frankfurt /Main: Campus Verlag GmbH, 2007. JONAS, H. O princípio responsabilidade: Ensaio de uma ética para a civilização tecnológica [The responsibility principle. Essay of an ethics for technological civilization] Trans. Marijane Lisboa and Luiz Barros Montez. Rio de Janeiro: Editora PUC/ Rio, Contraponto, 2006. HAHN, H. Globale Verantwortung. [Global responsibility]. In: HEIDBRINK, L.; LANGBEHN, C.; LOH, J. (Eds.) Handbuch Vearntwortung. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2017. p. 525–542). LEINFELDER, R. Assuming Responsibility for the Anthropocene: Challenges and Opportunities in Education. In: TRISCHLER, H. (Ed.) Anthropocene – Envisioning the Future of the Age of Humans. Munich: RCC Perspectives, Rachel Carson Center, 2013. p. 9–28.

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Afterword

Writing about this book is, first and foremost, to write about an issue that, unfortunately, continues to be extremely relevant and necessary in our society, since we keep facing discourses and facts that emerge from the different aspects of the act of discriminating against other people. It is also to highlight the importance of thinking about language, as Birgit Hendrischke said in the foreword of this volume, in all this process. This issue is so strong and needs so much dedication that in 2015, the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were created as an attempt to accomplish a better quality of life on Earth in many different aspects by the year of 2030. Among those goals, also known as Global Goals, there is a conscious effort to end poverty and to promote peace and prosperity in our society as a whole. This also means, in the end of the day, to fight discrimination in many of the ways it can be seen in our daily lives. This global movement promoted by the United Nations towards equality can be seen in the discussions developed in this book, and the SDGs are present throughout the discussion on discrimination and the action-leading ideas that appear when we consider the development of the natural and necessary ability to discriminate (i.e. to differentiate) – which allows us to acquire our mother language(s) and to survive in many contexts – and the hardship of the overuse of this ability, leading up to acts of discrimination against other people. In this sense, writing about this work is also writing about many struggles. Considering all the rich and relevant discussions that were developed throughout this book, we can affirm that this volume represents a major contribution to what constitutes the SDGs and what they call for. In this work, we can see that the movement that is ongoing in our society in the search for a better life for the whole global community has still a long way to go, but we have started already. And we have an enormous variety of ways to act in order to reach these noble goals. Theory and

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praxis can (and must) be put together to accomplish what we are looking for: a better understanding of what it means to be living together in this world. We are all together in this and we can do better to others and to ourselves. We have a long way to go, but we have already started.