Is it an american dream? narrativas tematizadas de vida sobre crenças e representações sociais do docente de li de três alunas egressas do curso de letras/inglês da uft.

Abstract

Many academics that choose to study “Letras/Inglês”, at some time before or after graduation, are inclined to the idea that they need to experience an experience abroad to learn English. In this way, there is the imaginary that the English learning would be conditioned to the conviviality with natives, mainly in the United States, that is usually the preferred destination of those who intend to acquire or to improve the knowledge in English language. Thus, this work investigates how the beliefs, social representations and the American Dream promote the English teachers’ identity construction based on the three graduated students’ life narratives. These graduate students studied “Letras/Inglês” (at Federal University of Tocantins, Araguaína Campus, in Brazil) and they are living in the USA. This research is qualitative and bibliographical. We used Paul Thompson's Oral History methodology (1992) to access these narratives. As a theoretical contribution, we move the concepts of Josso (2007) about the hinge moment and Moscovici (2003) that deals with the social representations of the subject and their forms of anchoring and objectification. To treat about beliefs and critical English-language teaching, we rely on Rajagopalan (2005) and Leite (2018). In view of the analysis carried out, a table of words was sketched to exemplify the cultivation of certain discourses involving beliefs and imaginaries employed in the academic environment – the university – and other collective universes – social groups – that together strengthen the individual universe of each subject and his / her representations of Being an English teacher, therefore, these individuals anchor themselves in discursive reverberations (reports of experience abroad and American Dream, Au Pair programs), images (pictures, books), cinematographic (films, series) and sensory (well-being).