Critical Phonological Literacy: Phonology Instruction Within a Critical Perspective

Conference: The European Conference on Language Learning (ECLL2021)
Title: Critical Phonological Literacy: Phonology Instruction Within a Critical Perspective
Stream: Applied linguistics research
Presentation Type: Virtual Presentation
Authors:
Adriana Tibana, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil

Abstract:

This case study was carried out at the Federal University of Alagoas in Brazil involving 20 undergraduate students of the English Language Course. It investigated the transformative potential of English Phonology teaching when devised within the perspective of Critical Literacy. In its ontological dimension it tried to account for the way these students perceive the changes in meaning-making generated by phonological processes in speech; in its epistemological dimension to perceive how they established relations with this knowledge; and in its methodological dimension to act as a transforming element of teaching practice, using these processes as a means of understanding oral language, envisaging more critical views regarding the teaching of the phonology of English as an additional language. It is situated within Critical Applied Linguistics (Pennycook,2010), it attempts to open a dialogue between Intonational Phonology (Ladd, 2008), prosody (Wennerstrom, 2011), negotiation of meanings (Canagarajah, 2013) and meaning-making (Lemke, 2012, Kress; Van Leeuwen, 2006); taking into account the ideas of heterogeneity, Critical Literacy (Janks, 2017), (Kalantzis and Cope, 2016), the studies on criticism (Menezes de Souza, 2011), among others. The results envisaged innumerous possibilities: reframing the participants’ teaching of Phonology within a critical stand; the native speaker epistemic break; cross-border dialogues of Phonology with the Social Sciences, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociolinguistics, for instance. The data shows that Critical Phonological Literacy engenders a better understanding of the processes that interfere with the construction of meanings in the oral language and promote reflections on the implications of these meaning-makings in maintaining or not social inequalities.

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