Researching Teaching/Learning of Languages - Any Room for Art in There? The Case of Brazilian Applied Linguistics Today and Its Sources of Knowledge: Borders, Boundaries, Barriers, Barricades

Pesquisar ensino/aprendizagem de línguas - Tem espaço para a Arte aí no meio? O caso da Linguística Aplicada brasileira hoje e suas fontes de saber: fronteiras, limites, empecilhos, barricadas

ABSTRACT

Based on a panoramic view of current debates regarding the ways of doing Applied Linguistics in Brazil, this article discusses the pertinence of the use of non-logocentric and/or non-scientific theories as reference for the description and formulation of research problems, as well as for the construction of research procedures in the field of (foreign) language teaching/learning. Relying on analyses of the epistemological bases of literacy theories consolidated in the pedagogical framework of the High School Curriculum Guidelines (BRASIL, 2006), seen here as a critical matrix for understanding languages in the country’s school system, the field of Art is suggested as being equipped with possible supporting theories that might aid in the constitution of a conceptual apparatus capable of highlighting the creative aspect inherent in the processes of research into the teaching/learning of a language.

KEYWORDS:
Applied Linguistics; Art; Science; logocentrism; research; teaching/learning

RESUMO

A partir de um olhar panorâmico sobre debates atuais a respeito dos modos de se fazer Linguística Aplicada no Brasil, o artigo discute a pertinência do uso de teorias não-logocêntricas e/ou não-científicas como referencial para descrição e formulação de problemas de pesquisa, bem como construção de procedimentos para esta no campo do ensino/aprendizagem de línguas (estrangeiras). Pautando-se em análises das bases epistemológicas das teorias sobre letramentos consolidadas na proposta pedagógica das Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio (BRASIL, 2006), vistas aqui como uma matriz crítica para se entender as línguas no sistema educacional do país, propõe-se o campo da Arte como coadjuvante possível na constituição de um aparato conceitual capaz de evidenciar o aspecto criativo inerente aos processos de pesquisa em ensino/aprendizagem de uma língua.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Linguística Aplicada; Arte; Ciência; logocentrismo; pesquisa; ensino/aprendizagem

1 Introduction

In its April/June 2018 issue, the Brazilian Journal of Applied Linguistics, or Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada (RBLA), put together a collection of articles regarding Critical Language Teaching (CLT), as seen through the lens of Freirean dialogical praxis, in which action and reflection intertwine. In this article, I want to draw on the contributions brought about by the authors of that volume, in order to propose the addition of a new set of theories (along with its methodological procedures and analytical categories) - which, to my knowledge, have yet to be explored - as possible conceptual sources for the specific kind of work that has been done within the confines of Applied Linguistics (AL) in Brazil, particularly in the area of Foreign Language Teaching aligned with such principles and practices as those put forth by High School Curriculum Guidelines (BRASIL, 2006), or Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio (OCEM), which fall into the realm of CLT. I discuss in greater detail in section 2 below how much of an ‘invitation’ to somewhat improbable theoretical connections between Linguistics and other fields (such as Art) a few of the articles from the April/June 2018 RBLA were. In section 3, specific connections, especially in relation to the creative aspect of processes of research into teaching/learning of a language, are analysed, and the proposal that a new set of theories - in particular those pertaining to Art - be integrated into the theoretical apparatus of CLT is outlined. Sections 4 and 5 conclude the article by highlighting caveats attached to such a meta-critical endeavour, while at the same time indicating possible paths for continuing research into the matter and evaluating the relevance of AL-CLT’s being more open to the pervasiveness of forms of knowledge that have been historically considered alien to research into teaching/learning of (foreign) languages with a critical perspective.

2 Ongoing debates regarding the epistemology of AL-CLT

Editors for the above mentioned issue of RBLA, Morgan and Mattos (2018) point to the fact that when it comes to the production of research on (foreign) languages, Brazilian AL’s take on the notion of criticality - by being coupled with Freire’s notion of dialogue - allows for what has been termed a narrative turn in the literature of the field. This favours singularity over universality in research, so that the academic community must recognise that “narrative and other forms of personalised story telling should not be underestimated for [their] potential to mobilise the agency of the social actors involved” (MORGAN; MATTOS, 2018, p. 214, emphasis added).

In this light, these authors continue their claim that “a core task of critical work involves challenging existing practices and habits of thought” (MORGAN; MATTOS, 2018, p. 214, emphasis added). However, they call the readers’ attention to the problem that such a desire, when materialised in words, tends to come across as though shaped by hegemonic discourses. To counter such a tendency, “if we want critical work to be locally relevant, we should be open to exploring new and varied ways of talking about it and understanding it through the embodied experiences of students and community stakeholders” (MORGAN; MATTOS, 2018, p. 215, emphasis added).

At this stage, the authors qualify the idea of writing - or reporting on research projects - in a non-standardised, more organic fashion as something of a hardship, as academic work has become more and more labelled according to neoliberal, competitive criteria, such as productivity and measurement against international reference indices, which have a direct impact on research funding and mentality.

Amid such a pressing scenario, the authors suggest we examine this problem, bearing in mind that we live in a literate society (MORGAN; MATTOS, 2018, p. 217). Doing so would help us realise the origins of much of the tension surrounding the (in)feasibility of a defying attitude towards globally legitimised, ‘sanitised’ academic diction. I believe this is a fair point, which deserves more attention, though my intent here in this article does not presuppose dealing with it in the same way as Morgan and Mattos (2018) do.

When they enquire “What language ideologies or theories of language do we offer teachers and students and what identity options and social possibilities do they suggest?” (MORGAN; MATTOS, 2018, p. 219), the authors raise. as possible counter-hegemonic linguistic models, social practices whose most striking aspect made visible in research today is what I would like to call their language-as-word-system¹ quality. The examples of such models given by Morgan and Mattos (2018) are English as a Lingua Franca, translanguaging and plurilingualism, emphasising the contemporary need to look carefully at “the politics of unequal Englishes in the world (TUPAS, 2015) and the linguistic (pre) conditions needed to speak with authority” (MORGAN; MATTOS, 2018, p. 218).

Their choice of example seems to gravitate towards language-as-word-system practices, since one important fact to consider nowadays is the presence of English in non-English speaking university lives, which becomes yet another pressure point to the already complex state of affairs within the academic landscape. However, for me, some questions arise that need to be discussed regarding what sort of work AL-CLT could be doing while relying on semioses that lie outside of a wordly world. This is not just a matter of ‘being different’, or ‘giving a new twist’ to the known; rather, it is about realising the fact that when we express ourselves in language-outside-words, rarely is it for the sake of style alone - it may simply be because, more often than we care to admit, our language lacks words, since they fail us. This, I believe, can be interpreted as a sort of ‘invitation’ to connect AL to theories that have historically lain beyond linguists’ common interests and thus have been considered alien to the field.

If we can accept that for a moment, then my initial questions regarding the kind of work currently being done by Brazilian AL would be:

• When attempting to materialise counter-hegemoneity critically, from where else - within that which is known to us and which we qualify as legitimate knowledge, but at the same time besides the domain of narratives, which has already gained prominence - have we been seeking to learn ‘other forms of personalized story telling’, and why have we chosen such loci as a source of inspiration and empowerment for research?

• From what kinds of language theories do we extract concepts/analytical categories in order to navigate through the sensory channels that are the basis of embodied experiences on the part of the producers and consumers of research? By chance, do we, as critical workers, credit the idea that talking about something - that is, in my understanding, using language-as-word-system - will suffice to understand it? If so, why is that?

• And, more essentially perhaps, what exactly are our ‘ghosts’, so to speak, our ‘habits of thought’ that we are trying to let go of, so we might feel we are able to work towards ‘hospicing our modernity’ (cf. ANDREOTTI; STEIN; AHENAKEW; HUNT, 2015) when it comes to our research practices?

My questions rely on the assumption that education (and research interested in it) is not to be exclusively scientific - for it touches on other aspects of life - and could also be artistic.² If teacher education could be considered first and foremost education (that is, if it shares with compulsory education the trace of being not exclusively science-oriented), its research practices will be impacted so that we need to rethink both the purposes and means of doing research in this field.

By claiming this, I am generally echoing Morgan and Mattos (2018, p. 215), who argue that “conditions can lead us to an over-reliance on field-external theories and strategies from prestigious disciplines whose primary concerns may be marginally relevant to language teaching conditions and identities.” This, Morgan and Mattos (2018, p. 216) claim, underpins Tagata’s (2018) defence of self-reflexivity and contextual sensitivity as means to break out of the ‘academic bubble’ that constrains the field’s potential for transformation.

More specifically, I am also echoing Menezes de Souza and Monte Mór (2018), who wrote another article from the same volume of RBLA that I am referring to here. These authors state that critique as consciousness or awareness presupposes a “self-present all-knowing thinking subject,” (MENEZES DE SOUZA; MONTE MÓR, 2018, p. 447) that is, it capitalises on the Enlightenment’s principles of rationality, science and progress, valuing them over other forms of thought/action to such a degree that an orthodox discourse is created by taking the cogito for granted. Incidentally, I would like to add that critique as consciousness or awareness also presupposes a subject whose understandings are created in terms of, and remain stuck inside, language-as-word-system and whose meaning-making process can be made self-evident if the discourse that materialises understandings adopts a verbalized shape (which, after all, has long been a must-do to boost the trio of rationality-science-progress and to keep it alive).

Art could help us avoid this predicament. As expected, art is self-conscious in that it aspires to create certain meanings, and thus also engages with metalanguage through a principle of awareness, though this engagement is not fully controlled by the knowing subject (i.e., artist), as we see in the case of performance art, for instance, particularly when it touches the domain of ritualistic practice.

This leads me to a core assumption: that Art - if reckoned as an example of a field whose studies have been historically considered alien to AL research,³ and if considered to be dependent on polysensoriality - can radically force linguists to look organically at the processes of thought and construction of: (a) research procedures and (b) the communication of research experiences/results. This is relevant when one considers that Art’s concern with the aesthetics of procedures and communication estranges it from most modern scientific work’s mechanisms in that a different level of priority is attributed to the creative (metalinguistic, subjective, locally situated, but also affective) aspect of research.

When delving into creative spaces, Art’s modi operationem and the epiphanies that they entail refrain from accepting a vocabulary that denotes a transition from complete non-knowledge to complete knowledge on a certain object of desire. Instead, they operate so that one who partakes in such practices comes to a point where they ‘[know] something but also [do] not [know] other things’ (MENEZES DE SOUZA; MONTE MÓR, 2018, p. 448), even after the flow of consciousness provoked by the practice halts. This is clearly a step in the opposite direction of the modern idea that knowledge has to be ‘total’ in relation to the object it is based upon, and that it has to follow scientifically organised and legitimised procedures, or else both the knowledge of the object and the object itself are inexistent (MENEZES DE SOUZA; MONTE MÓR, 2018, p. 448).

Bearing that in mind, I see that in Menezes de Souza and Monte Mór’s words, as in Art, there is something to be lived through between two different orientations towards knowledge: first, being restricted to the knowledge and the means to acquire it that we are already familiar with (which is also a danger of ultra-specialization in technocratic, neoliberal times and is very likely to happen in the face of the possibility to paraphrase the known, since so much production is required of academics at the universities); and second, feeling ever compelled to move on to novelty, ‘accumulating’ knowledge (much in the Freirean ‘bank education’ sense).

The fact that knowledge is transformative, but also transforming, requires us to live it dynamically, seeing its ever fading and reviving parts, which never look ‘entirely’ familiar to us. The dilemma between stagnation and anxiety (which I posited above) can be approached differently, that is, with another sort of spirit, instead of having a synthesis of its own, bearing the same intact state of mind.

3 Towards a re-evaluation of the theoretical apparatus in AL-CLT

I previously developed work that suggests that research based on the OCEM shows traces of creativity at an affective and metalinguistic level similar to those experienced by actors of post-dramatic theatre. For a thorough analysis, see Adami (2018).

That study now supports my claims that we may have reason to bring Art closer to AL-CLT if we want the field to grow stronger through resistance in times where it has become much more difficult to talk about our research efforts critically, particularly with people outside the academic world. Possibly, Art could fuel that intent, because it is able to touch upon more ‘trivial’ aspects of daily life to a variety of different social groups. As Napolitano (2014, p. XVI) claims, today, works of Art stem from and reach a varied population because of mass circuits of culture consumption, which means that they are also incredibly diverse (and even contradictory) in their purposes, forms and means. As I see it, this feature could aid research in becoming more plural, going against what Rajagopalan (2006, p. 155) has called Linguistics’ neglect of lay opinions and experiences.

Incidentally, there is another important feature to be considered on the matter of plurality: logocentrism’s shaming of discourses and thought processes that escape the spectrum of the Enlightenment’s principles (i.e., the trio rationality-science-progress, or the cogito). In Art, the verbal/non-verbal entanglement is also a fact, which does not cause language-as-word-system to be undermined, but rather ‘provincialised’ (cf. KOHN, 2013), that is, the need to rethink the role attributed to it in research (and life as a whole) is made evident.

This provincialisation could begin by a re-evaluation of the actuality of the distinction between verbal and non-verbal, since the non-verbal that is implied in theories that use such terminology seems to me to be already less ‘vivid’ than the concept of language implied, for instance, in the notion of metrolingualism (cf. PENNYCOOK; OTSUJI, 2015), which reminds us of the importance of smell in communication. Following that same kind of reasoning, my idea of language-outside-words depends on the unification of body (with its supposed ‘lower’, ‘dirtier’, senses of smell, touch and taste) and mind (with its supposed ‘higher’, ‘more hygienic’, senses of vision and hearing), thus situating knowledge beyond the space of the mere visual and auditory cues that are used to distinguish between verbal and non-verbal language, and disregard anything else that fails to fit such categories.

To allow the reader to see these claims critically and not draw over-simplistic conclusions, however, I believe it would be appropriate to comment briefly on how language-as-word-system has been an important object in research into counter-hegemonic discourses. I hope that by doing so I can avoid dismissing it as incompatible with new research that can be generated from the dialogue between Art and AL-CLT, which would be both unfortunate and careless, since there is a whole body of work exploring an important dimension related to language-as-word-system which is already in itself not purely hegemonic.

Authier-Revuz (1990, p. 30), for instance, organises a list of points of heterogeneity where one can see within an utterance a certain discourse presenting explicit alterity in relation to itself: (a) use of a different language (i.e., use of foreign words); (b) use of a different register (e.g., pedantic, aggressive, etc.); (c) use of a different discourse (e.g., technical, moralist, feminist, etc.); (d) use of a different modality of consideration of the senses of words (e.g., metaphors); (e) use of reservations, hesitations, corrections, confirmations; (f) mention of a text’s interlocutor as such. The combination of some or all of such procedures determines automatically an interior/exterior for the discourse conveyed by an utterance, constituting identity when one observes the distancing marks that illuminate limits between discourses (in other words, points of heterogeneity) that fight one another to survive, since only one voice can prevail as the point of articulation of all other voices in each utterance (AUTHIER-REVUZ, 1990, p. 31; DUCROT, 1987). This suggests that even outside of purely academic parlance, logocentric academic mentality could be in control of our desires and the affirmations stemming from them, or we could be using it creatively to turn academic diction on its head when appropriate.

Chabanne (2004, p. 2), in turn, calls our attention to the degrees of ‘dissolution’ of grammar that are achieved when one succeeds in tackling grammatical knowledge with no proper grammar lessons. This can be promoted, the author claims, by the mere act of rewriting a text, as long as such a task is enticing enough for the writer, who is likely to engage in metalinguistic reflection, i.e. observations, comments, questions, interventions in the form of the text (CHABANNE, 2004, p. 4). This shows language-as-word-system’s capacity to be created over and over again, and although there is the risk that rereadings/rewritings are carried out by learners in order to meet a standard (i.e., the common diction of academic discourse), there is also the possibility that reflection leads to questioning the values that sustain a certain textual structure as the preferred one.

As much as that may sound interesting, Chabanne (2004, p. 6) also points out a possible paradox surrounding metalanguage: even though beginners will want to go over and assess what they have written, they will probably need guidance as to what should be observed and criticised. This is interesting because in trying to be critical we are somehow always beginners without guidance, trying to learn a grammar by engaging metalinguistically with alterity in (re)readings and (re)writings. As Mozambican author Mia Couto states (2016, p. 3) in his essay addressed to the 32nd São Paulo Art Biennial, it is possible for one to write without one’s knowing exactly what one is doing. Preparing to write is comparable to preparing for a trip with no luggage, so it is less crucial to see the path, than it is to guess the destination. This uncertainty is what constitutes the flavourful labour of writing. Although this may sound strange for some academics, Couto (2016), defends that the literary narrative is very similar to the scientific narrative: we believe the world to be controllable and orderly, which is a lie, but we prefer to believe it, since it reinforces anthropocentrism. However, this is precisely because both Science and Art touch something that has yet to be named, existing in a territory of mistery and enigma.

From Lacan (1996, p. 808 et seq.) we can extract some interesting ideas about the relation between knowledge and performance, as well. A reading of this author reminds us that scientists are also subjects, suggesting they always preserve a degree of ignorance, which prevents them from knowing all the time what interests the whole world in terms of research, and incidentally makes science’s desire for universality more of a presumptuous attitude than an actual deed.

This begs the question why, then, will science not look to alternative paths of knowledge/performance, such as those mentioned by Lacan (1996, p. 809), adopted by Buddhists or peoples that make use of hallucinogens? The Lacanian answer is straightforward: these experiences are seen as bearing no logical trace, thus their language cannot be interpreted as being any different than pure, chaotic excitement. Therefore, the reasons for such experiences, i.e. the context in which they appear, are left unquestioned, for they are thought to be unintelligible. This is important when we think of other forms of discourse which, not unlike the unconscious, seem thoroughly illogical but in fact can be dug into and approached through dialogue, i.e., through attempts to connect to another reality by means of language-outside-words as much as language-as-word-system.

The opposite of that, Lacan argues, closes down possibilities of a subject’s identity’s renewing itself, that is, becoming other, since the denial of dialogue causes the domains of the imaginary and the real to merge into one, and so nothing different than the already known is to be expected. Consciousness, then, implies the active search for otherness. In the case of an ‘I’, it is the search for otherness within, since the ‘I’ is merely a shifting signifier in an utterance, not a concretely signified physical entity that stands as one. Now Morgan and Mattos’s (2018, p. 219) question sounds even more compelling: What identity options and social possibilities has AL-CLT been offering researchers, teachers and students, if it is aware of the ‘I’s’ need for constant predication in a wordly world?

If we were to analyse that point in textual practices of researchers and/or teachers, Ducrot’s (1987) theatrical metaphor could help us pursue an answer for that question. According to him, the relation enunciator/locutor has the same value as that of character/author, that is, the author puts in a scene a character that carries out a deed (a linguistic and extralinguistic action), which in turn is not referring to the author directly, though he or she can interact with the audience by instilling significance in a character’s behaviour throughout the plot. In this sense, the words that reveal multiple voices in texts could be seen as indicative of intentional constructions on the part of the locutor, thus making the choice of ‘characters’ that would be displayed of both ethical and political kinds.

In terms of (meta-)narrative reflection, Brazil has some good examples of its own: Geraldi’s (1991) research into the teacher as author, Moita Lopes’s (2006) propositions of a “renarration” of social reality, and other works by researchers who deal with language teaching in our country and who have displayed a growing interest in autoethnography as a methodology capable of coping with such demands (e.g. SILVA, 2011; ONO, 2017; SOARES, 2017; PARDO, 2018). Since much relevant literature has been produced, we could carry on citing works indefinitely. However, diving too much longer and deeper into those examples would miss the point that I am trying to make here: that even considering the rich contribution of such combined studies, my intent is still that of looking at “what is not words” (cf. BARAD, 2003). As I see it, this would somehow represent a stretch on translanguaging that would make room for intersections between AL-CLT and Art.

According to my own reading of Anwaruddin (2018, p. 302), another author from the RBLA issue on CLT, translanguaging is the hybrid process whereby speakers of more than one language explore their linguistic repertoires as they navigate through a variety of complex social settings, communicating with different semiotic purposes and resources put together in ‘soft assemblage’, according to the setting. García and Wei (2014 apudANWARUDDIN, 2018), in turn, see translanguaging as ‘capable of calling forth bilingual subjectivities and sustaining bilingual performances that go beyond one or the other binary logic of two autonomous languages.’ In face of that statement, Anwaruddin (2018, p. 303) argues that this linguistic phenomenon may be, in fact, transforming the social as it is, by means of the unexpected assemblage of semiotic resources that translanguaging presupposes. As a consequence, by taking AL beyond a wordly world (by means of Art’s mechanisms), I believe we could be taking one more important political step in dealing with our own ‘internal’ plurality, after all we are polysensorial beings whose capacity to use our senses and our languages creatively, much like in translanguaging, has rarely been stimulated by modern academic principles.

In this sense, Wielewicki (2014) and Sousa (2014) indicate that denying the lonely supremacy of language-as-word-system (and, more specifically, logocentrism) through multimodal narratives is also a matter of making room for interaction with the plurality of bodies besides one’s own, not just at the individual level, but also considering alternative thought habits and the social groups or even civilizations to which they are attached. Façanha, Nascimento and Nascimento (2018) are a recent example of this with their work with anglophone literature and game design. They have the merit of showing how a wordly world intertwines with a world outside of words, though their intervention is not of an artistic nature.

With that in mind, one can wonder about AL-CLT’s position in relation to Art and other fields it has barely - if at all - mingled with. Which, then, would be the most accurate description of the separation between applied linguists in Brazil today and artists: a border, a boundary, a barrier or a barricade? Could the separation be made less rough, possibly by showing Art’s potential to contribute to AL-CLT’s purposes? Let us now expand on the implicit proposition of this question.

3.1 Art as source for AL-CLT

Art’s polisensoriality’s restlessness allows for interest in the world (and thus constitutes research beginnings) and defies distinctions between the domains of the biological, cognitive, social, historical, political and cultural (ADAMI, 2018, p. 46 et seq.). By accepting this, we could, as Pimenta claims (1990, p. 281), live through those senses of ours that have been degraded by a repressive aesthetics of logocentric interpretation, which would allow us to truly penetrate Art and the domain of creativity, instead of trying to decipher it.

This notion of ‘penetrating’ as opposed to ‘deciphering’ is important, because inside it the idea of distancing one’s self from an object of study is at stake. In this sense, I would like to recall Bakhtin’s (2003, p. 262) concept of genre, not as something cold that can be observed, but rather a vivid aesthetic creation that atests to the inexhaustibility of humans’ multiform, polyphonic activities. In my own reading of Bakhtin, genres are situations to be lived through, as much as thought through.

The importance of living genres through relates to Freud’s (2010, p. 10) considerations about the importance of religiosity (and not religion) as a provider of a feeling of unlimited connectedness to an object on the subjective level, regardless of faith. In this sense, he recalls a famous poem by Goethe that claims (2010, p. 19) Science and Art provoke such a feeling, like a religion, and if one is to seek such a feeling, one will need them both, for they are, in Freud’s words, the two biggest achievements of humanity.

Another point related to living through, or penetrating Art, is that it is not pure expression: it is also culture and politics in the sense that individuals educate other individuals (FREUD, 2010, p. 75) by means of the latent coexistence of distinct common worlds, imaginary and real worlds, in works of Art. He even reminds us of the existence of a bond between the processes of cultural evolution of masses and that of the individual, since the superego and its recriminations echo society’s values.

Art, therefore, would reinforce AL-CLT’s effort to become ever less egotistical (i.e., ‘self-fed back’ or ‘inbred’), since the notion of an exclusionary, Adamic sort of originality cannot be sustained in face of intertextuality and interdiscursivity (BAKHTIN, 2010, p. 114 et seq.), two driving forces of the contact between mentioned common worlds, as well as imaginary and real worlds.

As expected, however, the contact between AL and Art is not easy. Looking at the work of Art rather than at the mental process for producing it, Read (1965, p. 143 et seq.) informs us that in Art an essential tension is at play: that between the ideology of the individual as opposed to the ideology of society as the governor over formal experimentation when a search for materialising ‘breakthrough desires’ is in place. However, that seems less important when we consider that any creative activity requires collectivity in order to be found relevant, hence the need that one be open (against isolation) to others partaking of one’s projects, a scenario which reveals in itself the very working mechanism of Art (READ, 1965, p. 210).

That is the nature of research in Art: selecting aspects of life and facing them by operating modelations at the level of the sensitive forms emanating from an object of interest, that is, interacting with the world with the intent of constructing knowledge if not through formal experimentation conducted in a collective space. This means that if Art studies were to offer AL-CLT theories to work with, we should not be trying to reconnect with a supposed totality to feel complete (or fill a gap in our existence). Instead, we should look around at our collective spaces while constructing the form of our published works in order to contemplate/conceptualise our incongruences that are most perceived locally. Thus, Art, much like other practices such as psychoanalysis - according to Eckert-Hoff’s (2008, p. 54) reading of Zizek - could present us with new modi operationem to escape the normal academic diction and its need to over-explain and over-systematise, thus giving us some room to try and better ‘read ourselves reading’ (MENEZES DE SOUZA, 2011) in a local dimension we can cope with affectively, creatively.

By ‘coping with’ I do not mean meticulously describing. Or making full statements, for that matter. Obviously, as researchers we want to express ourselves as we publicise our work, but the reason behind bringing Art into AL-CLT would be that when we do research, not unlike many artists, we want to promote changes in society through the sharing of raw ideas, through an invitation to experiment and then promote debate, and quite possibly sometimes through the offering of entire alternative, more sensible ways to go about life.

At this point, we must be warned that Art may run slightly in a different direction than AL, considering the notion that all Art aspires to be pleasurable by achieving beauty (cf. READ, 2007, p. 12). Although beauty is an open concept, it seems to me for now that in research certain ways of life that might be presented as better alternatives do not necessarily turn out to be pleasurable at all, for they are hard to learn.

Meanwhile, we could also raise the question whether the idea of beauty in AL-CLT research would be more closely related to the idea of social or sometimes cognitive justice, rather than one recalling the sensoriality of the body as criteria for evaluating pertinence. If so, this could be the case possibly for fear that beauty as a criterion could reinforce inequalities, since certain bodily senses have been historically privileged over others, following the ideologies of certain social groups’ representation of life. Hence, in short, it is not absurd to think that if beauty were to be sought, it would end up merely sustaining a hegemonic way of life. However, that issue remains open, since there are many ways to read ‘beauty’.

As the end of the article draws nearer, I will sustain plainly that we ought to assess the borders, boundaries, barriers and barricades that have historically been respected by our field, which has maintained considerable distance from Art studies. If we arrive at the conclusion that those obstacles are unjustified, we must absolutely make a leap and find room for Art as a conceptual source in AL-CLT. Inspired by Borges (1990, p. 270), I enquire: if Racine was considered French, despite writing about Greek and Latin themes, and if Shakespeare was considered English, despite writing about Scandinavian and Scottish themes, should AL-CLT not be considered equally relevant if it made use of artistic mechanisms? Let us paraphrase what Pimenta (1990, p. 9) said: what limits poetry is the very fact that, as it is made of words, it can try to liberate itself from fixidity - and it did, in many periods of history - yet it is always bound to the logic of a wordly world. Art, the ‘bigger picture’ of language, may give us some liberation in that sense.

Once again, I would like to highlight that allowing for Art to come down on AL-CLT would make room for one’s self to interact with their own body’s plurality, or polysensoriality, which would allow us to see the many different selves that constitute us, or the many civilizations that inhabit our thoughts - forming a sort of ‘transgressive theory’ (PENNYCOOK, 2006, p. 72 et seq.) that considers bodies in their entirety, which in previous work (ADAMI, 2018, p. 81) I have called ‘heteroglossia as spirituality practice.’

For this reason, those interruptions of discourses of the self-centred ‘I’ provoked by alterity (cf. DUBOC, 2018) must come in all forms and means, besides the wordly world. In fact, they already do, as we know to be the norm in classrooms, where complexity is such that singularities are inapprehensible through any kind of discourse (ADAMI; MARTINEZ, 2018). So it is not, after all, a matter of using Art to try to apprehend singularities, but rather to work on them (that is, relating to them whatever the situation, even when their complexity seems almost unbearable) to construct new, pulsating mental architectures (cf. ADAMI; MARTINEZ, 2018) in artistic terms as much as in scientific terms within the confines of research projects.

4 Future research

Below I present two important aspects to be considered in future research: caveats of the proposal I made in this article and a possible agenda for continuing research into the matter of Art and AL-CLT.

4.1 Caveats of this proposal

If we accept Art’s polysensoriality, its integration to the set of theories that sustains advancement in AL-CLT is an important matter to consider. Although I have consistently used the word ‘theory’ throughout the article, we must recall that in Art theory rarely comes solely attached to books. In other words, only reading about Art will not do. Plainly put, in order to adhere to my proposal, a commitment to the world of Art is required, that is, seeking out for it in life in the flesh becomes critical. Researchers who fail to do so will relate to Art on a principle of mere deciphering, which will only amp up the modern, scientific quality of their work. On the other hand, though inclined to create space for Art in their lives, some academics may even struggle with time constraints caused by university life.

4.2 Possible agenda

For those interested in developing the proposal contained in this article, what follows is a list of items that could be worked upon in order to continue research into the matter of Art and AL-CLT:

• Explore what kinds and conceptions of Art (i.e., what aesthetics) we, as linguists, would be willing to accept. Gay (2009) and Bürger (2017) offer interesting contributions in this sense;

• Explore what learning theories we would validate as coherent in an artistic world of AL-CLT. Illeris (2013) offers great insights into the different, although overlapping, views on learning in contemporary times;

• Explore the similarities and differences between agency and authorship in AL-CLT contexts influenced by Art. Takaki (2013, p. 111) uses the term ‘shared authorship’ to qualify cosmopolitan societies (though her text does not show any inclination towards an artistic reasoning), but most of the literature in the field seems to prefer ‘agency,’ a somewhat more sociological word, as I see it;

• Explore the possibilities of dialogue between language-as-word-system and language-outside-words. Joseph Beuys’s work as artist/teacher could contribute to this task. Moreover, the double volume Schizo-culture (LOTRINGER; MORRIS, 2013) can be interesting to look at, for it is an experimentation in publication style, as are the anarchist magazines and newspapers studied by Litvak (2001), as well as Sophie Calle’s book, entitled Take Care of Yourself (2007).

5 Closing remarks

Perhaps now an opportunity for change in AL-CLT arises if we consider Art’s potential to help us better deal with the inherent hardships of research, for it is capable of making raw experience, or difficult content, into more palatable forms (SCHECHNER, 2003). In addition, Art gives us the possibility to realise we are not essentially organisms, in spite of the fact that we have historically been portrayed as such, as though we belonged in this world with a stable function which we were predestined to (ADAMI; MARTINEZ, 2018). Decolonial revisions stemming from an exogamous move towards Art could foster a desire that has been more and more recognised and publicised in our field in recent times: to always grow more confident and socially/politically relevant, but without becoming narrow-minded and/or slipping into self-centered reference, but rather relating to plurality in new, ethical ways. If analysed, even the thought of bringing Art into AL-CLT could already show us - by means of our reactions to the idea - the immense plurality of our own selves.

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to my fellow ‘talkers’ from the ‘conversation circle’ on teacher education at the 1^st International Forum on Culture, Literature and Applied Linguistics (Fórum Internacional de Cultura, Literatura e Linguística Aplicada - FICLLA), held at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) in Curitiba between November 8^th and 9^th, 2018. During that particular non-standard academic activity I had the opportunity to present, orally and in public, some loose personal ideas I had had for a while and think them through, along with great, generous individuals whose work I have come to admire over the years. That both motivated and allowed me to better formulate many of the statements contained in this article. My gratitute also goes to the colleagues and professors at the School of Education and the Unit for Study of Diversities, Intolerances and Conflicts (Núcleo de Estudos das Diversidades, Intolerâncias e Conflitos), from the School of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP), for being generous in offering rich comments during classes and study sessions, which enabled me to further elaborate on my initial thoughts.

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• 1
  Paired with ‘wordly world’ and along with ‘language-outside-words’ / ‘world outside of words,’ this is a heuristic notion created by the author of the article specifically for the venture that is presented in this text, so as to be able to ponder (i.e., to enquire with an open mind, rather than to define a priori) what has been done in the field of AL-CLT. Its use does not imply that words are separable from other aspects of communication. It, in fact, presupposes - as is known in Art - that the application of words to communication alters the behaviour of other signs, and vice versa. Thus, such four categories are intended to question how words interact with that which is not verbal in academic parlance, which would allow us to better understand whether they take up the role of structuring elements, redundant chunks, phatic particles/expressions, etc.
• 2
  This differentiation does not presuppose an opposition between such realms, but rather understands them both as having concrete political priorities that are singular to the historical-cultural context that has marked either social group (i.e., ‘the scientists’, ‘the artists’) throughout the centuries where these two areas of research and life have coexisted.
• 3
  Even though Applied Linguistics has been able to dialogue with many other disciplines in its studies in search for a more complex analytical apparatus (going as far as reaching out to sociology, anthropology, aesthetics and stylistics, according to Rojo (2006, p. 255), Art has always been left aside.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  25 Nov 2019
• Date of issue
  Jan-Mar 2020

History

• Received
  28 Nov 2018
• Accepted
  10 May 2019