Vida longa ao rei e vida breve à hegemonização do inglês: o projeto pedagógico do curso de Letras na perspectiva do ensino de inglês como língua franca na UFT

Abstract

The quick expansion of the English language around the world has been the subject of frequent research, as pointed out by Bordini and Gimenez (2014), especially regarding the teaching and learning of this language. The proportions reached by English, never seen in any other historical moment, characterizes it as lingua franca, global and/or international. The reason for this includes the colonization processes by England, the great United States’ economic and military power and the globalization and territorial shortening brought by the Internet. In this scenario, English-speaking countries seem to be the holders of the English rules, as if they were its true owners. The status of English as a lingua franca (ILF) opposes the hegemonic view of the language and grants language users the character of ownership; in addition to pointing out benefits for language teaching and learning, such as: a feeling of belonging for trainee teachers, legitimacy and safety when teaching and overcoming what is called copying the native's English. Therefore, this work aimed to analyse the Pedagogical Project of the Language and Literature Course (PPC) of the Federal University of Tocantins (UFT), to find out if there is any mention of English as ILF, its approach and configuration in the current document. To do so, I am guided by the following questions: 1) Does the Pedagogical Project of the Course in English Literature and its respective Literatures at UFT contemplate the teaching of English as a lingua franca? 2) Do the disciplines of the PPC privilege discussions about the status of English in the world or do they promote the homogeneity of the English language? If there is mention of teaching English as a lingua franca, is the PPC in line with the disciplines' bibliographic references? To achieve the objectives, this research was based on the qualitative interpretative paradigm with documental data collection; the context of the research is the Literature Course at UFT, Porto Nacional campus. Based on the analysis, it is possible to state that there is mention of the statute of the ILF, but the bibliographical references are mostly American and English, corroborating with the hegemony of the English language by these countries.