Language Practices of Mbya Guarani Children in a Community-Based Bilingual School

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways a community-based bilingual school in the Tekoa Marangatu Indigenous community in Brazil supports and/or hinders the continuing development of the home language of Mbya Guarani children. It also highlights how first- and third-grade Mbya Guarani children engage in translanguaging and look to their peers in making the sociolinguistic and sociocultural transition from home to the school context. The constant transformation of this reservation has been reshaping the social structures and activities the Guarani perform on a daily basis, yielding new forms of literacy. Even though Portuguese is the dominant language in the school context, both adults and children use Guarani as a way to navigate and resist the pressures of homogenization exerted by the outside world. Children are seen as social actors who transmit knowledge among themselves, the adults in their lives and the different contexts in which they live and experience bilingualism, biculturalism and biliteracy.