INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES, LINGUISTICS BORDERS AND SOCIO - POLITICAL MECHANISMS OF INCLUSION/EXCLUSION IN EDUCATIONAL SPACES IN THE SOUTH OF BRAZIL

Mobility, economic and cultural changes derived from a globalized world call upon the emergence of new cultural and linguistics practices, which in turn significantly influences particular forms of inclusion/exclusion of... [ view full abstract ]

Mobility, economic and cultural changes derived from a globalized world call upon the emergence of new cultural and linguistics practices, which in turn significantly influences particular forms of inclusion/exclusion of individuals in urban and rural communities. Language, culture and peoples knowledge regarding contemporary practices derives value from the space and the historical time these individuals are involved in (Heller 2003). In this paper, we will explore, the way students and teachers adjust their cultural and linguistic practices according to sociopolitical mechanisms developed under a monolingual ideology (Jaffe, 2012). We will focus on ethnographic research in urban and rural zones in the South of Brazil, where ethnolinguistic minorities use their multilingual repertoires to organize their lives (Bloomaert, 2010). From the perspective of Critical Applied Linguistic (Rampton, 1995; Moita Lopes, 2006), we will explore the ways teachers’ and students’ language use and practices operate in such sociolinguistic complex spaces, and will address issues such as legitimacy and indexical orders of belonging through presenting and analyzing relevant examples. Our ethnographical studies have shown that although the language concept in school communities is attached to notions of the nation-state, everyday linguistics practices carried out within historical and spatial contexts reveal resistance, flexibility and mobile borders between languages in use. Avoiding being excluded from the social processes in time and space where they live in, students who belong to minorities groups reveal/ hide cultural practices as well as activate their full linguistic repertoire according to the language and knowledge which are considered valued in those specific scenarios within the production and interpretation of the situated practices (Jaffe, 2012; Menezes de Souza, 2011). Thus, students transform their actions in terms of linguistic and cultural value and search new ways to deal with the ideological- political forces that operate at school which build their path into the established social order of the newly adopted community they now belong to. Based on students practices we outline some points that may be useful for language education research, emphasizing the need for understanding diversity as a resource for practical language learning.