Mercantilização da linguagem no ensino de inglês

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate guiding elements of my English teaching practice in language schools, having as a central problem the observation that assessments of our local reality are neglected or altogether omitted from the work in the classroom. Starting from the premise that, in the current neoliberal socioeconomic context, linguistic resources can be marketed as a product in exchange for capital (HELLER, 2010; PARK, 2010; 2011; 2015), I seek to understand which characteristics construct the English language as a product or commodity, having my teaching experiences in local language courses as empirical evidence. The data to be analyzed here are presented through autoethnographic narratives (ANDERSON, 2006) in each chapter. Firstly, from the theoretical perspective of L. Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Ordinary Language (1999[1953]), I investigate how the teaching of English has its understanding of the nature of language and of what it would be like to learn and to use a language based on a systemic, representationalist and essentialist language ideology (BLOMMAERT, 2006). Secondly, I examine how such beliefs and discourses (FOUCAULT, 2008a[1969]) that we reproduce about the English language as a symbolic system and a natural competence of a certain people and territory, along with the discourses about how to teach it and how to learn it, reveal fundamental characteristics of coloniality of knowledge (LANDER, 2005; MIGNOLO, 2005; QUIJANO, 2005; 2010), given that all the materials we use in teaching, as well as teacher training courses and certifications that legitimize language proficiency, are productions of the European language industry that we consume avidly and uncritically. Finally, in the context of recent modernity in which professional and social relations are guided by the neoliberal ideology (FOUCAULT, 2008b; HAN, 2020; HARVEY, 2005), I observe how the English language is discursively constructed as a valuable skill for raising human capital of individuals (PARK, 2015; URCIUOLI, 2008) and what contributions are made by English language teaching to the formation of subjects (FREIRE, 2021[1968]; PENNYCOOK, 2001; 2017). As a result of these analyses, I contend that the commodification of English exclusively serves immediate economic objectives, conceals the real conditions of language learning and its role in social, cultural, professional and economic relations, and contributes to the formation of individualistic and competitive subjects; broadly speaking, I claim that an education grounded on market principles, which privileges learning practices whereby knowledge is perceived as disconnected from the sociocultural and political context in which it exists, does not contribute to the formation of critical subjects (PENNYCOOK, 2001; 2017), that is, individuals who, upon constant re-assessments of theirbeliefs and of relations of power and knowledge, would be able to take informed action in coherence with the social groups to which they belong in order to transform their reality.