TENSIONS AMONG PORTUGUESES IN METACOMMENTARIES FROM EAST ASIAN INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN BRAZIL

ABSTRACT The aims of this paper are to analyse how East Asian international students narrate tensions in Portuguese language, or Portugueses, through metacommentary, and to foster reflections on the counter-hegemonic potential that language learning comprises, particularly when thinking of the internationalisation agenda implemented by a Brazilian public university. To pursue that, we depart from audio-recorded semi-structured interviews, later manually transcribed, with a Korean and a Japanese undergraduate student during their sojourn. We observed that these tensions in Portugueses arose as students’ communicative repertoires were put to the test, either by them or their interlocutors, in different spaces. Our discussion foregrounds how students, when engaging in various social practices on campus and off-campus, manoeuvre sociolinguistic scales in comments made by themselves or by their interlocutors about ways of speaking Portuguese. We considered that, overall, students resort to ecological factors when doing scales, whilst indexing dominant language ideologies. Moreover, it was also possible to conceive that metacommentary from their interlocutors, particularly from Brazilians, impact (negatively) on students’ perception about their language learning and linguistic practices. To tackle these tensions, we advocate for an internationalisation agenda that envisages language education not only to international students, but also to home students and staff in order to promote different degrees of language and social justice awareness.

摘要 本研究旨在分析东亚国际学生如何通过元评论（metacommentary）叙述葡萄牙语使用中的张力，并探讨语言学习所蕴含的反霸权潜力，尤其是结合巴西公立大学推行的国际化议程展开思考。为此，我们针对在巴西旅居的韩国与日本本科留学生开展半结构化访谈并进行录音，随后由人工转写访谈内容。研究发现，当学生的交际语库在不同场景中被自身或对话者检验时，便会产生葡萄牙语使用中的各类张力。本讨论重点探讨学生在参与校内外各类社会实践时，如何在自身或对话者关于葡萄牙语表达方式的评论中，操控社会语言尺度。我们认为，学生在进行尺度操控时，整体上会诉诸语言生态因素，同时也会彰显主流语言意识形态。此外，研究还发现，对话者（尤其是巴西本土人士）所作出的元评论，会（负面地）影响学生对自身语言学习与语言实践的认知。为应对这些张力，我们主张推行一项国际化议程，将语言教育覆盖至国际学生、本土学生与教职工群体，以此提升不同群体的语言与社会正义意识。