Abstract
ABSTRACT This article draws on constructs of the discursive dialogic analysis designed by the Circle of Bakhtin, on the notion of language ideologies and on a transgressive view of Applied Linguistics to interpret how undergraduate students majoring in English and Portuguese from a public university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, position themselves in relation to English, English Language Teaching and literacies in written learning autobiographical narratives. The learning autobiographies were produced by students in the beginning of their college education as future English and Portuguese teachers in an academic writing course. Parting from the assumption that what we come to identify as our thoughts, beliefs and “truths” is constructed in the interpersonal level before becoming “ours” (Voloshinov 1929 [1986]) and aligning myself with an ideological view of literacies (Street 1984, 1995 [2014], 2009), I analyze the ideologies about languages and literacies taking into consideration both the micro-context in which the autobiographies were produced and the macro societal levels that influenced how the selves and the others are positioned in the narratives.
Highlights
The choice of written learning autobiographies as a genre to foster future teachers’ reflection about their learning trajectory is based on my ideological assumption that a theoretically framed reflection about our learning and professional journeys can figure as a meaningful semiotic instrument in teacher education
I decided to include the topic of English as Lingua Franca/World English as a central one in the course Academic Writing I, which can be attended by students from the second period of their undergraduate studies in Portuguese and English on
The literacy practices in which future English teachers engage are somehow influenced by their responsive understanding of the objectives listed in Table 1, extracted from the Course Plan related to the 1st semester of 2015, when the excerpts of learning autobiographies analyzed were produced
Summary
The choice of written learning autobiographies as a genre to foster future teachers’ reflection about their learning trajectory is based on my ideological assumption that a theoretically framed reflection about our learning and professional journeys can figure as a meaningful semiotic instrument in teacher education. Expanding Heath’s (1983) notion of literacy events as any situation in which written language plays a fundamental role in interaction, Street proposes the concept of literacy practices to encompass the wider historic-cultural settings that influence (and are influenced by) the content, form and style of genres Street proposes an approach that transcends the detailed description of literacy events to focus on the ideological stances assumed by participants in relation to them Since such an approach shouldn’t rely solely on the linguistic characteristics of a particular communicative event, Street’s choice of ethnographic methods to approach literacy practices is in dialogue with Blommaert and Rampton’s (2011) view that bringing the ethnographic apparatuses to (applied) linguistics and discourse analysis can provide interpretive directions towards a deeper reflexivity concerning the circulation and distribution of knowledge and power. I move on to the analysis of the ideological preconceptions that underpin the literacy practices that organize participants’ (inter)actions
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