ONESELF AS ANOTHER: IDENTITIES IN VISUAL NARRATIVES OF PORTUGUESE AS A SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS

ABSTRACT In this qualitative study, based on Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self (RICOEUR, 1991), as well as on the works of Hall (2006) and Norton (2016), I examine how the self and the other are represented in narratives of ten foreign learners from different countries learning Portuguese as a second language at a public University in Portugal. Given the multiple cultures and texts present in contemporary society in which knowledge is built and shared through different semiosis, inspired by the work of Kalaja, Dufva and Alanen (2013), and Melo-Pfeifer (2015), visual narratives in freehand images drawn by participants are the main instrument for data collection in this paper, having as reference for the analysis, the categories of The Grammar of Visual Design, adapted from Kress; van Leeuwen, (2006 [1996]) and Mota-Ribeiro (2011). The analysis of the images suggests that participants perceive themselves sometimes as children, sometimes as hybrid beings, with big ears, or even as aliens, isolated from the interactional process and frustrated in the desire of being recognized by the other, represented by colleagues, teachers, relatives or native speakers. The research has important implications for teacher education, revealing that it is necessary to accept multiple and subjective views of oneself and the other, not only in the classroom, but in the social life of the community as a whole, in the attestation and recognition of one another, in order to strengthen identities thus enabling equitable social worlds (EARLY; NORTON, 2012), because, as Jewitt and Oyama (2001) stand, images do not reflect reality, but build it.