ESSAYS ON LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM

Abstract

This book is the result of my research developed during a teaching internship in Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PLE) at the Federal University of Mato Grosso.
Undoubtedly, language professionals who have already been able to teach their L1 have already struggled to some extent with certain problems inherent in such a practice. In light of what I experienced, what became explicit for me as the greatest wealth and, at the same time, the greatest limitation within the teaching act was precisely the fact that my students and I did not share the same conception of the world.
In this sense, much more than linguistic dilemmas, what is presented in a PLE room is a series of (dis)encounters of absolutely different symbolic realities. The teacher, therefore, in the meantime, is faced with multiple challenges. Now, we are faced with the need to teach the language based on its real use, because it is with such reality that each student will find himself in real life. Now, questions arise that are intrinsic to the cultures from which foreigners emerge.
So, then, I stopped during my research on the problem of Linguistic Relativism, while, in my own reality, I experienced it. My text, therefore, presents the investigative journey that I made starting from a work based on the linguistic system per se to arrive at a more abstract reasoning about the languages in question.
I recognize, knowing the limits of my possibilities, that such a book does not exhaust the themes with which it proposes to work. However, I also emphasize that it is necessary to start somewhere. Bearing in mind, therefore, that both areas on which I write; namely: Linguistic Relativism and PLE teaching are fields little studied in Brazil, it seems to me that the present contribution has its value.
In short, therefore, I have the objective of presenting, in this work, some preliminary reflections on the field of linguistics; above all, in the concentration areas of Description and Analysis of Modern Languages, Applied Linguistics and Philosophy of Language. I hope that such reflections and studies can, to some extent, offer subsidies and stimuli to anyone interested in the topic in question.