Translingual crossings: an enactive-performative approach to a pedagogical guide for the teaching of Portuguese as a welcoming language to children

ABSTRACT

This article revisits the jongo activity ‘Pisei na Pedra’ (2014) integrated into the Nossa Casinha guide (Martins & Sala, 2022) for teaching Portuguese to migrant children. Jongo is seen as an Afro-Brazilian form of expression, encompassing chants, drumming, collective dance, and spirituality (Rufino, 2014, 2023). The connection between this assembly (Pennycook, 2018) and an enactive-performative pedagogy, uniting biological and aesthetic aspects of poetic languages (Aden & Eschenauer, 2020; Maturana & Varela, 1987; Lecoq, 1997, cited in Aden & Eschenauer, 2020), forms a translingual framework. This allows jongo to be understood as an Afro-diasporic expression in anti-racist education. This perspective also affirms the aesthetic, emergent, experiential, embodied, and transformative nature of jongo as a decolonial practice. By challenging the conservative approach of language activities favoring compartmentalization, assimilation, and monolingualism, the translingual framework promotes transformative education in Portuguese as an additional language. It embraces complexity, relationality, and affectivity as integral to our experiences in linguistic education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This paper is a restructured, revised and expanded version of a work, originally published in Portuguese by Abreu & Rocha, published in Acta Scientiarum in 2022 under the title of Encruzilhadas translíngues: uma vivência enativo-performativa afro-diaspórica em guia pedagógico para acolhimento de crianças em português.

2. Information on the 2022 edition of the project is available at: <https://sig.ufabc.edu.br/sigaa/link/public/extensao/visualizacaoAcaoExtensao/1526> Accessed on: 11 Sep 2022.

3. Available at: <https://editora.ufabc.edu.br/images/editais/2021/Resultado_final.pdf> Accessed on: 27 Aug 2022.

4. It is important to highlight that, despite this mention, the material does not clearly indicate an understanding of critical interculturality. In this chapter, we resonate with Catherine Walsh (2009) regarding the conceptualization of interculturality from a critical and decolonial perspective. In contrast to a functional approach that only assumes the recognition and inclusion of cultural diversity within society and nation-states, ’[…] critical interculturality starts from the problem of power, its pattern of racialization, and the (colonial, not simply cultural) difference constructed in relation to it. […] It is a construction from and about people who have experienced a history of domination and subalternation’ (Walsh, 2009, pp. 21–22).

5. All the quotations which are originally written in Portuguese and that are presented in English in this chapter are free translations of the originals.

6. The material has an open license under Creative Commons – Non-Commercial Attribution, which allows the adaptation, creation, download and redistribution of its content, by crediting the authors and granting new licenses under the same parameters.

7. Senzalas can be defined as a group of poor houses used as accommodation for slaves on a farm.

8. Casa-grande refers to the house where the family of the owners of big rural properties in colonial Brazil lived.

9. Sobrados are two-story-houses where rich people lived in colonial Brazil.

10. The material has an open license under Creative Commons – Non-Commercial Attribution, which allows the adaptation, creation, download and redistribution of its content, by crediting the authors and granting new licenses under the same parameters.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico.