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Pedagogical stylistics, literary awareness and empowerment: a critical perspective Sonia Zyngier and Olivia Fialho Language and Literature 2010; 19; 13 DOI: 10.1177/0963947009356717 The online version of this article can be found at: http://lal.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/1/13

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Article

Pedagogical stylistics, literary awareness and empowerment: a critical perspective

Language and Literature 19(1) 13–33 © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermission.nav DOI: 10.1177/0963947009356717 http://lal.sagepub.com

Sonia Zyngier

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Olivia Fialho

University of Alberta, Canada

Abstract Based on the premise that stylisticians who are involved with teaching should be aware of the pedagogical orientation and reading paradigms which inform their practice, this article questions whether critical pedagogy can dialogue with stylistics as an approach to working with literary texts in the classroom. The theoretical claims are illustrated with examples from two Literary Awareness workshops in an EFL situation. The argument leads to the conclusion that irrespective of the political orientation and a rather romantic view of education, some of the ideas proposed by critical pedagogy can still contribute to the area of pedagogical stylistics in the years to come. The article concludes with a recommendation for more empirical research in the area.

Keywords critical pedagogy; EFL; empowerment; Literary Awareness; literary education; pedagogical stylistics; style

1 Introduction Nearly a decade after the turn of the century the same questions asked since literature entered the curriculum over 100 years ago remain: Should the focus be on textual interpretations, on historical perspectives, on sociological implications, or on the language of the text? The only consensus about working with literature in schools is that there has never been any. Literary education has resisted systematization. As compared to the waves of theoretical contributions which have washed over literary work, interest in pedagogical issues has ironically remained at a very low level. In fact, as Berkowitz (2006) puts it, Corresponding author: Sonia Zyngier (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Rua Marquês de São Vicente 232/302, Gávea – Rio de Janeiro, 22 451–040, Brazil. Email: [email protected] Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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for more than three decades a large faction of professors of literature has contributed to extinguishing the flame ... It would be advantageous if our universities provided a haven from the forces so inimical to the love of literature. To do this, they need only live up to their official mission, which includes safeguarding knowledge of the cultural and intellectual treasures of the past, transmitting an appreciation of them to today’s students, and, at the same time, equipping students to challenge authoritative interpretations and think for themselves. Unfortunately, the teaching of literature at our universities today routinely makes matters worse, burying knowledge of the classics, deadening students’ literary sensibilities, and demanding students’ assent to a partisan, dogmatic, and incoherent system of beliefs.

Todorov (2009 [2007]) shares the same opinion. Not only have professionals tried to convey the idea that literary reading belongs to the small circle of the selected few, but they have been constantly contradicted by ‘many readers outside the academy who have never heard of Fish or his colleagues [and who] continue to value the experiences that literary reading offers and appear to find it distinctive’ (Miall, 2006: 1). If literary texts continue to be read outside the academy, and if many literary teachers have done a disservice to the area, then reappraising literary pedagogy cannot be taken lightly or disregarded any longer. Generally speaking, teachers tend to see the learning of literature as a natural phenomenon which does not need any theoretical concern or empirical testing. We will argue that, like teaching language, it should be systematized and tested. In fact, some stylisticians have been quite aware of the need for a clear pedagogy (see Clark and Zyngier, 2003; Zyngier, 2006; Short et al., 2007; Burke, 2008). Short et al. (2007: 106) explain how students of English literature are not keen on studying ‘the language of literary texts in the systematic, analytical and precise detail that stylistics requires, and so the stylisticians have been forced to think harder about how to engage their students with what they teach’. They also attribute this interest to the close relation stylisticians have kept with EFL and freshman composition in the American tradition, which have made them concentrate on the ‘nuts and bolts’ (2007: 106) of the profession. Rather than offering interpretations or dealing with facts both about and around the work of art, working with literary texts – from a critical stylistics perspective – has to do with providing tools that help students appreciate the verbal artistry at the same time that it promotes or amplifies their experience of it. The conservative position that most literature teachers take, however, is to naturalize teaching and claim that practices are so diverse, multiple and context-specific that a set of tenets widely accepted would be difficult to obtain. This viewpoint holds that conscientious professionals would know what their students need. More often than not, teachers are not even aware of which paradigm informs their practice. They prefer to investigate texts, regardless of the contexts, the participants or the perspective which are part of their work. We argue here that this assumption should be put to test by empirical research into what in fact results from the activities developed in the classroom. The existence of literature as a discipline does not depend on a decision about the relevance of the syllabus only. Both reading and responding to texts require an environment in which not only individualities can thrive and students’ voices can be truly heard, but also where learners can develop who they already are and what they bring to class. Today, besides the contributions that linguistics have brought to the study of literary texts, some scholars have been pointing out the need to investigate the role that feelings play in text processing. Recent research has shown that the problem with much of Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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pedagogical stylistics so far is that it has concentrated for too long only on spotting and interpreting textual patterns with little or no regard to the reader’s feelings (Hjort and Laver, 1997; Oatley, 2004; Miall, 2006, among others). There is now also a need to focus on the role feelings play in literary reading. Many reader response theories which developed after the 1970s, including Fish’s well-known ‘affective stylistics’ (1980 [1970]), did not actually pertain to the role of feelings, tending rather to focus on cognitive aspects. The challenge ahead is to see how to integrate stylistic analysis and readers’ emotional responses, a perspective which has to take into account who they are and what really matters to them. Based on the assumption that reading is a private activity which involves feelings and that any literature course must deal at some point with the solitary experiencing of texts, we suggest that action must be taken at the level of language sensitization. In order to put this point more clearly, we suggest the experience of reading literary texts in a stylistics class should involve awareness of students’ initial reactions, guided by feelings, through a process of understanding, into formalizing their interpretation and production of their own texts. For a meaningful experience with literary texts in the classroom environment, we propose that an initial programme of awareness is developed. Literary Awareness (Zyngier, 1994) stems from studies in Language Awareness (see, for example, Hawkins, 1987; James and Garrett, 1991) which focus on the knowledge of what language is and how to use it. Defined by the NCLE Working Party as ‘a person’s sensitivity to and conscious awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life’ (Donmall, 1985: 7), Literary Awareness ‘results from a process in which the reader awakens to and takes cognizance of the verbal artistry of a literary text’ (Zyngier et al., 2007: 198). We may call the first moment reaction, a personal, non-transferable emotional experience. It requires the physical act of reading, the perception, decodifying and relating the signals on the page and involves the immediate emotional reaction and the first non-formal, verbalized (or not) impressions (e.g. laughter, curiosity, anxiety). The second moment is that of awareness itself, which depends on observation and retrospective reading, when the reader starts to take into account which aspects of the text caused his or her reaction. The third moment can be identified with the formalizing of textual interpretation. Here the reader perceives the text under study as a part of a wider system where history, ideologies, literary tradition, conventions and so on are at work. At this stage, readers may resort to this knowledge to substantiate their interpretations. A fourth moment is that of creation, when students play with language in order to produce their own literary pieces. It is necessary, however, to keep an open mind to the polysemy of literary texts, as Verdonk points out (2002: 78): Perhaps the most important claim that can be made for stylistics is that its very precision of analysis reveals how divergent and various the effects of different features of style can be. It shows up how the very richness of language as a resource for making meaning makes this meaning unstable, uncertain, and in the last analysis, elusive.

In this article, we aim at creating a link between stylistics, critical pedagogy and Literary Awareness as an attempt to show how individual readers in an EFL environment can respond to the emotional impact of specific linguistic patterns and leave the possibility open for their being personally changed by the reading experience, aspects which remain foreign to many classrooms. The arguments presented in the theoretical part are illustrated with a description of two workshops carried out by the same instructor on the same topic, but using different Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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strategies. Far from being an empirical study, the data collected are meant as an illustration and not as definite evidence. More research must be conducted to validate some of the points raised here. Our intention is only to readdress the need to promote critical and autonomous readers within an environment that facilitates students’ more collaborative and genuine participation, one in which they reflect upon their lives in the world.

2 Critical Pedagogy The origins of critical pedagogy are debatable. Some claim that Brazilian educator Paulo Freire should not be considered responsible for its beginnings but seen rather as ‘the most influential educational philosopher in the development of critical pedagogical thought and practice’ (Darder et al., 2009: 5). Origins have also been attributed to the Frankfurt school of critical theory (Kincheloe, 2008: 46–7). However, Paulo Freire was the central figure in the 1960s, and later considered ‘the inaugural philosopher of critical pedagogy’ (McLaren, 2000: 1). Freire’s central focus is the notion of ‘conscientização’, or ‘gaining awareness’, which, in fact, was the basis for developing the notion of Literary Awareness. Kincheloe translated the term as ‘critical consciousness’ (2008: 72) whereas Darder et al. (2009: 14) define ‘conscientization’ as ‘the process by which students, as empowered subjects, achieve a deepening awareness of the social realities which shape their lives and discover their own capacities to recreate them’. Whichever term is used, Freire did not coin it, as often assumed (Scott, 1991: 278). He was only one among a group of teachers who were developing methods by means of which literacy would lead to political participation. Freire himself explains: It is generally believed that I am the author of this strange word ‘conscientização’ as this concept is central to my ideas on education. Actually, the word was proposed by a group of teachers from the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros around 1964 ... As I heard the word for the first time, I immediately realised the depth of its meaning. I am absolutely convinced that education, as a practice of freedom, is an act of knowledge, a critical approach to reality. (1980: 25, our translation).1

In March 1964 a military coup cut short the group’s project. The attempt to destroy it, however, only helped disseminate the ideas further. Freire, who went into exile, had then the opportunity to talk to a wider and more international audience. As a consequence, his ideas were adopted in many different contexts for many different purposes. Before his death on 2 May 1997, he had already become emblematic. Wink (1996: 64), referring to him as ‘the quintessential teacher and learner’, quotes her daughter’s comments after having attended one of his talks: ‘He’s just like Gandhi, only with clothes on’. Freire’s work has also been used as a strategy for social mobility in the academic world where quoting him and adopting his discourse has become a potential strategy for career promotion. This is actually a paradox if we remember Freire lived ‘within the margins of power and prestige’ (McLaren, 1999: 49). What is worse is that from a project aimed at bringing literacy to poor Brazilian peasants by making them think critically about their social condition and participate politically in social change, it has become so abstract and decontextualized that it may now fit almost any context. The move from a very local and limited socio-political context towards globalization actually distanced critical pedagogy from the school situation, placing it in the hands of theoreticians who have produced arguments to suit different contexts. Take, for instance, the announcement of Kanpol’s Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction (1999): Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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Critical pedagogy refers to the means and methods of testing and attempting to change the structures of schools that allow inequities. It is a cultural-political tool that takes seriously the notion of human differences, particularly those related to race, class and gender. Critical pedagogy seeks to release the oppressed and unite people in a shared language of critique, struggle, and hope, to end various forms of human suffering.

What strikes us about this definition is its generalizing discourse. The author resorts to the plural (‘schools’, ‘inequities’, ‘differences’, ‘the oppressed’, ‘people’), or refers to abstract concepts as race, class, gender, human suffering, as if they were consensual terms, equally understood by all. ‘Release the oppressed and unite people’, for instance, echoes a cri de guerre rather than a description and can be understood in totally different ways depending on the perspective from which it is voiced. Besides becoming too abstract, the theory has been misunderstood at times. Evans (1999), for instance, suggested that transactionist approaches (cf. Straw, 1990) to the teaching of language and literature were more appropriate to the EFL classroom than critical pedagogy. She claimed that critical pedagogy (in which she included critical linguistics and critical language awareness) fit into transmissionist paradigms of education and was therefore inappropriate for the teaching of literature to ESL students. This conclusion clearly illustrates that critical pedagogy has been occasionally misunderstood. Regardless of the problems the theory has come across for over 40 years now, it is still valid in its view that all human activity emerges from an on-going interaction of reflection and action, of theory and practice (Darder et al., 2009: 13). Freire’s method is one of dialogue, which speaks to an emancipatory educational process, committed, above all, to the empowerment of students. Strongly opposing transmissionist or ‘banking’ approaches to education, in which the teachers deposit in their students cheques to be cashed at testing moments, Freire (1987 [1970]: 58) holds that critical pedagogy can only occur within a transactionist paradigm. In his words, ‘there is only knowledge in invention, in re-invention, in the impatient and permanent search that men do in the world and with the world’2 (1987 [1970]: 58, our translation). Critical educators see themselves as researchers in constant dialogue with students, who are also expected not to take anything for granted. If we follow the main tenets of critical pedagogy, literary education should be regarded as an event which takes place in a specific social context that depends largely on dialogue and interpersonal engagement. According to Giroux (1992: 3), it is ‘a form of cultural production ... implicated in the construction and organization of knowledge, desires, values and social practices’. Critical pedagogy is not just another approach. It questions the curriculum (what to teach) and the educational system (to what extent the system produces and reproduces social and cultural inequalities). In the case of language and literature teaching, it emphasizes the need to be very clear about the ideological model which is being reproduced. According to Pennycook (1994: 297), [T]he question then becomes how to construct a theory and practice of education that can, on the one hand, account for why some ‘disadvantaged’ students fail to ‘succeed’ in school and, on the other, develop ways of teaching that offer greater possibilities to people of color, ethnic minorities, working-class students, women, gays and lesbians, and others, not only in order that they might have a better chance of ‘success’ in the ways traditionally defined by education but also in order that these definitions of success, both within schools and beyond, can be changed. Broadly speaking, then, critical pedagogy aims to change both schooling and society, to the mutual benefit of both. Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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Still, many questions remain unanswered. As it stands, critical pedagogy reads as a romantic version of education which entails many theoretical and practical problems, such as: • What are the risks of transformation? Where will it lead to? • Isn’t making the world a better place a rather naive posture? Can we really improve the world? What does improve mean? Better in what sense? • Is the concept of liberation always implicit in the world of critical pedagogy? How is liberation understood in the First World as compared to Developing or Third World countries? • What should students be liberated from? Should they all be equally ‘liberated’? • How can this paradigm be translated into everyday practice? Is there structure and rigour in critical pedagogy? • How can teachers become critical educators? What pre-service programmes are there for teachers of literature? In fact, the direction critical pedagogy has taken led Ellsworth (1989: 298) to argue that the notion of ‘empowerment’, ‘student voice’, ‘dialogue’, ‘... were repressive myths that perpetuate relations of domination’. She pointed out that because the teacher is also historically and socially situated, work on critical pedagogy has ‘actually exacerbated the very condition critical pedagogy is trying to work against, including Eurocentrism, racism, sexism, classism and “banking education”’. Today, the problem with critical pedagogy is that it aims at a master discourse without necessarily considering the particularities of historical context, of personal biographies and of the subjectivities within the four walls of a classroom. Giroux (1999: 8) warned that the ‘learning process begins from the point of view of the learner and moves towards self-knowledge and self-mastery – only then can we think of liberation’. This statement leads us back to Freire’s basic notion of ‘conscientização’. In the light of these arguments, literary educators, stylisticians included, need a methodology which will help students make the reading experience one which aims at an intercultural understanding within and outside the school environment. Pedagogical stylistics would go beyond the acquisition of a linguistic toolkit, towards an emotional involvement in which the reader understands how language impacts upon the reading and how he or she is part of a cultural politics. Teaching literature becomes rather a space for interrogating how texts become meaningful and how this experience is relevant to the individual student. One of the ways of promoting this approach is to guarantee room for genuine and natural dialogue. The classroom, then, becomes a place for collaboration and an environment for students to discuss their experience from a more substantiated position rather than a setting where ‘instruction’ takes place.

3 Research on Literary Awareness Systematized over 14 years ago with a class of third semester Brazilian EFL university students (Zyngier, 1994), Literary Awareness was initially offered on an experimental basis. Empirical studies assessing the response of students to the programme have been conducted since then and have attempted to account for its effectiveness (Pinto, 2000;


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Fialho, 2001, 2002; Pinheiro, 2002; Fausto, 2006; Zyngier et al., 2007; Paiva, 2008). Most of these studies were developed by previous or current students of Literary Awareness, illustrating how the students themselves can become critical educators and researchers of their own learning experience and practices. Zyngier et al. (2007), for instance, report on how the notion of awareness can be assessed. In a programme which has a twofold aim to: (a) promote students’ sensitivity to the manifestation of verbal art and (b) enable students to act in the role of readers, producers, mediators and critics of texts (Schmidt, 1982), some relevant questions emerge: Do students really become sensitive to, or aware of the manifestation of verbal art? Does such awareness entail only the sensitization to the verbal artistry of texts, enabling students to make justifiable interpretations of a given text, or does this programme actually sensitize and empower students to critically engage with their own realities? What does it mean to become ‘aware’? Focusing on the analysis of the reports produced at the end of each of 11 meetings, the researchers observed three levels of awareness emerging from the data. The first level was labelled Absence of Awareness, when students merely described the texts and the class activities, or reported the explanations of the teacher or other students’ reactions, without any critical positioning. The second level was called Signal of Awareness, when students started positioning themselves by means of the use of first person pronoun forms, assuming the position of agents in the process of knowledge. Here they began to look at the way language was being used and moved from the position of mere observation to that of self-reflection. Interventions in the process of knowledge were, however, restricted to evaluations of the class or to reflections on the relevance of the class to themselves. In this case, students started to reflect on their learning experiences and on the specific linguistic patterns studied. The third level was labelled Presence of Awareness, when there was presence of a link with other subjects and other contexts. For instance, students were able to create relations of cause and consequence, finality, and comparison that had not been explicit in class, or they related what they were exposed to in different contexts of application. They were also able to generalize the concepts learned by means of indetermination, pluralization, generic names, hyponyms and so on and make suggestions for future classes. Here the notion of ‘awareness’ acquired a new dimension, determined by these students’ voices. To become ‘aware’ meant a move from the position of observers to that of formulators of concepts. Students here indicated that they not only acquired knowledge but they were also able to transform and extend it to new fields of actions. Analysis of a total of 407 written protocols: 11 each for 16 students investigated in a 1999 class (Fialho, 2001; 2002) and 11 each for 21 students investigated in a 2003 class (Zyngier et al, 2007) revealed an increase of levels 2 and 3 in both classes investigated in these two different moments. Therefore, evidence indicated that awareness seemed not only to occur but also to increase during the programme. The Literary Awareness workshops may have promoted an environment where students became independent readers, thinkers and agents in their own worlds. In 2004, the materials initially used with third semester Brazilian EFL university students were adapted to Brazilian literature and the programme has been carried out at both university and high school levels since then. The project ‘From Paper to Screen: Towards a Digital Culture’, developed by 12 former students of the programme, all from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and at the time participating in the role of researchers and critical educators, was carried out in four public high schools in the State of Rio de Janeiro.3


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Two sub-projects were developed: (a) Cognition and E-motion in Digital Reading, which adapted Literary Awareness to the new media, with the aim to investigate the influence of the digital environment in students’ cognitive and affective reading processes; and (b) Creating@Literary Workshops, which consisted of 12 classes of 90 minutes each covering the different unities of the Literary Awareness methodology. In half of the classes, materials were presented on paper, organized in a textbook, and in the other half, on a computer screen. Some findings indicate the programme was successful in sensitizing these high school students to the effects of verbal artistry by means of which they could become independent and active readers of their own world. They also reveal the need for further investigations on how to integrate new technologies into the literature classroom (see Fausto, 2006; Mendes, 2006). Ultimately, this project remains as an example of successful partnership between a public institution and a private company to promote reading and offer alternatives to the status of literary education, whose failure and its drastic overtones have been announced nationally and internationally over the past years. For example, the most recent findings of the Latin American Laboratory for Evaluation of Educational Quality, linked to the United Nations revealed the critical status of reading education in Brazil. In a study developed between 2004 and 2008, involving 100,752 3rd graders and 95,288 6th graders in 3000 schools, 71.39 per cent of the 3rd graders were rated as presenting reading levels below what is considered adequate to this grade. With the 6th graders, such percentage was lower but remained, nevertheless, at 50.07 per cent, a picture similar to most Latin American countries, with the exception of Cuba (O Globo online, 2008; see also Pisa 2000, 2001; ABTE, 2003, 2004; IDEB, 2008). These astonishing statistics reveal that urgent action ought to be taken. It is high time that alternative teaching methods to ‘banking models of education’ should be developed and assessed. Literary Awareness is an attempt in this direction. At the moment, the programme is being adapted to elementary education. It is also relevant to mention that it has been tested in a completely different cultural setting from the one where it started. In 2005, Literary Awareness workshops were offered at Kyiv National Linguistic University and then expanded to another Ukrainian university, Horlivka State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages (Fedorova et al., 2006).

4 Critical pedagogy and Literary Awareness: An illustration To illustrate how some of the major principles of critical pedagogy in a Literary Awareness workshop can be put into action, two workshops of 90 minutes each were set up for thirdsemester students of English at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Each group consisted of 21 students whose proficiency in English was equivalent to a low-intermediate level, although Group 2, according to other instructors’ reports, performed better in grammar and writing (average 6.87 for Group 1 and 7.1 for Group 2). Both workshops, videotaped and observed by a postgraduate student, began with students’ initial reactions to a certain linguistic pattern. These students would then be expected to formalize their interpretation by means of linguistic evidence, produce their own imaginative texts using the pattern under focus, and then explain how they went about creating it. In both workshops, it was the teacher’s aim to promote an environment whereby students:


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Realized the effect of time/tense contrast in a poem. Responded to a poem using linguistic evidence to support their interpretation. Discussed the issue of racial discrimination. Produced their own texts with time shift patterns and explained what they did. Reflected on the relevance of the experience to them. Suggested changes.

To carry out these objectives, both workshops were designed according to the following steps: (a) Introduction: initially, students were asked to react and notice shifts in time in a poem, moving to elicitation of the pattern (in this case, time/tense contrast). (b) Application: a series of activities was proposed so that students could not only become aware of the linguistic pattern but also manipulate it and support their own interpretations resorting to linguistic evidence. (c) Production: students then put into practice what had been discussed by creating their own texts using the pattern focused. Although both workshops were held on the same day, in Group 1 the instructor (also the first author of this article) acted in the role of a mediator, leaving the students free to do the work suggested. In Group 2, a more teacher-oriented strategy was applied. With Group 1, students were asked to gather in threes or fours and were handed two sheets of paper: one with a copy of ‘I, too, sing America’ by Langston Hughes and another one with a worksheet on the poem (see Appendices I and II). They were given half an hour to read the text and go through the worksheet. In the meantime, the instructor walked around the classroom, offering help and advice when requested. After the 30 minutes, students asked for an extension, affecting the time they needed for producing their poems, which they felt they needed to finish at home. With the second group, reading and interpreting the text was carried out in a more traditional way. This class was not divided into groups, although they were given a copy of the worksheet after the class was conducted. The instructor asked all the questions and about the same 4 or 5 students advanced all the answers. The rest of the class just sat back and listened. As this section went quickly, the students had more time to create their own texts. While they worked on their poems, the instructor walked around the classroom and helped them when asked. Most students managed to finish their poems before the class was over. Group 2 covered all the steps of the lesson plan within the 90 minutes. Both Groups 1 and 2 were asked to hand in a report the following day containing at least 250 words with their comments on the class attended. The materials collected from this experiment were two videotapes, two observation sheets, 41 poems written by the students and 42 reports. Each of the works produced was tagged according to a code. The first number identified the workshop attended; the two next digits identified the student; the last digit identified the task (1 for poem; 2 for essay). For example: 10101 (Workshop 1, Student 1, poem); 21002 (Workshop 2, Student 10, essay) and so on. Figure 1 shows some samples of students’ poems followed by their comments on their work.


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11001: My Poem

11201: Poem

I, do, want respect I study very hard But they don’t think I’m smart I work and I do it well. I put my money in the bank, They don’t trust, They laugh. Tomorrow, I will work no more And I will study no more. I will be rich So they will ask me help And I will laugh, Then. I do have respect.

I used to be only a mother and a wife Under man’s submission I was always involved No right to think, no right to vote Around kitchen walls I was always enclosed Now I’m independent In my job I can show my skills And with man I can share my bills But the old prejudice I can still feel.

I’m taking about myself, but I think that there’s other students in the same situation than me. My mother and my family don’t recognize my value and my efforts so don’t respect me. So I began with ‘I, do, want respect’. I dream about being rich but not a millionaire so when I get there I will be respected and they will see my efforts to be where I will be.

In the process of creation of my poem I used the past and the present tenses to create the contrast between the situation of woman in society in the past and the situation in the present.

11301: Poverty

11701: The poem

Don’t have what to eat Nothing to drink Nowhere to visit What do you think? But it’ll change Poverty will disappear And we’ll arrange A future without fear

They used to be so respected An example of life for their learners One of the most important professions Teaching language, history and numbers Today they have to fight for dignity ‘Cause there isn’t the recognition of their work God bless them to achieve their aims Teaching their pupils how to change this world

I used the present (infinitive) and the future tenses to create a contrast between two situations. Firstly, I described poverty nowadays. Then I used the future tense to express my wishes.

First I chose the time reference: past and present. Then, I produced a contrast in time between these references in order to show how the teacher’s situation has been modified. Through the use of the past tense and the future tense and try to demonstrate how things has changed: the teachers used to be respected in the past but they are not anymore.


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Zyngier and Fialho 20801: Five hundred years

21901: Revenge!

They killed But they are proud They destroyed But it doesn’t matter They took what they found And now we are together Five hundred years It’s all they say Forget what was wrong And commemorate To become a nation They chose the worst way Massacre and devastation Was the price to pay

Yesterday I was a student Sitting behind the class Í thought that I couldn’t Do the exercises at best Tomorrow I will be a teacher Standing in front of a class My students will think they can’t reach The same things that I have passed.

With the purpose of creating a new effect I used two tenses in my poem: past and present. I tried to alternate the tenses in the first stanza and in the second one I mixed them. My intention was to contrast two situations with different ideas and show what is behind the concept of ‘five hundred years of Brazil’.

First of all, I have used the contrast between past and future disposed in two different stanzas. The first stanza was written in the past tense and the second in the future. My intention was to show all my feelings as a student now, and then I thought about how teachers work, what they do and I could only see all the time that it looks like a revenge. So, I thought that it sounded not only a good and funny idea, but also a perfect title to my poem. The contrast between time is good way to show the condition, the situation a person that uses it, in this case me. I wanted to show my own feelings, as I am studying to be a teacher, someone who deals with these two sides: students’ minds and teacher’s thoughts. I have noticed that it is easier to show feelings without hurting other people’s idea though alternation of time.

Figure 1

In order to see how students performed, four arbitrary categories were set up for a matter of comparison and graded on a scale from 5 to 0 (where 5 = outstanding; 4 = excellent; 3 = very good; 2 = good; 1 = satisfactory; and 0 = weak). The categories were: (C1) linguistic accuracy (C2) use of rhyme and rhythm (C3) perception of pattern studied in class (C4) use of elements such as ellipsis, inversion, neologism and so on. Because of the difficulty of grading the fourth category, it was marked only as 5 (present) and 0 (absent). It is important to stress that these categories were by no means meant as attributions of literary quality, but as mere indices that could be used for comparison between the two groups. Table 1 presents the results obtained in the poems. Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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Table 1. Students’ performance in writing poems Student 10101 10201 10301 10401 10501 10601 10701 10801 10901 11001 11101 11201 11301 11401 11501 11601 11701 11801 11901 12001 12101 Average (%) 20101 20201 20301 20401 20501 20601 20701 20801 20901 21001 21101 21201 21301 21401 21501 21601 21701 21801 21901 22001 22101 Average (%)

C1

C2

5 5 4 3 5 0 2 5 1 0 4 3 1 5 3 3 3 2 5 0 1 2 4 5 5 5 3 3 1 3 3 0 3 2 3 0 4 5 2 2 2 1 3.04 2.57 60.9 51.4 5 3 3 0 3 3 2 5 5 4 1 0 5 3 5 5 4 0 3 3 – – 3 4 4 3 4 3 4 2 3 3 5 2 4 2 3 4 4 0 3 2 3.65 2.55 73 51

C3 5 5 0 5 0 5 5 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 3 5 5 5 5 3 4.23 84.7 5 5 5 5 5 0 5 5 3 5 – 5 4 5 0 4 5 3 5 5 5 4.2 84


C4

Total

5 20 5 17 0 5 0 12 0 1 5 17 0 11 5 14 0 10 5 15 5 13 5 19 5 20 5 16 0 9 0 6 5 15 0 8 0 14 0 9 0 6 2.38 12.23 47.61 61.19 5 18 0 8 5 16 0 12 0 14 0 1 5 18 5 20 0 9 5 16 – – 5 17 0 11 5 17 5 11 0 10 0 12 0 9 0 12 0 9 0 10 2 12.5 40 62.5

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We must stress that these results cannot stand as conclusive evidence, as no statistical analyses have been carried out. Table 1 only illustrates that the groups performed differently. Group 2 seemed to be more linguistically proficient, confirming the results they had obtained in their grammar and composition classes. But they were less ‘linguistically flexible’, in opposition to Group 1, who presented more instances of ellipsis and inversion, although no neologisms, as shown in Table 2. These initial results indicate that more research has to be carried out to verify whether and how far the possibility of playing with language and producing imaginative texts depends on linguistic proficiency. For these students, being more proficient did not necessarily seem to affect their linguistic creativity. Neither did pattern perception and production seem to be affected by this variable. Both groups performed equally. Rhyming was also a technique equally used by both groups. In terms of the themes selected for these individual productions, although both classes had discussed racial issues, none of the students brought it up. This may be a serious finding which requires careful consideration. (Invoking a common English idiomatic expression, we may have just walked past a sleeping dog). Group 1 presented more variety of topics, as indicated in Table 3. Students here seemed to be more concerned with personal growth and change, although in Group 1 women’s rights was also considered. One student in Group 2 failed

Table 2. Linguistic flexibility Elements

Group 1

Group 2

ellipsis 4 inversion 6 neologism 0 Total 10

2 5 1 8

Table 3. Choice of themes for individual poems Theme

G1

G2

Total

Learning/growing/personal change 4 5 9 Social criticism in general 2 2 4 Women’s rights 4 0 4 Violence and war 1 1 2 Love 3 0 3 Marriage and divorce 2 0 2 Teachers and students 1 4 5 Pollution/environmental disasters 1 3 4 Hunger/poverty/unemployment 2 2 4 Others: homesickness, singing, seasons 1 3 4 Total 21 20 41


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to hand in her poem. Each poem was followed by a short explanation of what they did and why they chose the topic. If perceiving the pattern and producing texts did not seem to have been much affected by the difference in pedagogical approaches, and if the issue discussed in class did not seem to have been the students’ main concern, then would there be any difference not in the experience itself, not in the acquisition of knowledge, but in the way students perceived it? In order to check the students’ experience of the class, to listen to their voices, we analysed their 42 reports on the class.4 Group 1 tended to produce longer and more detailed essays. The average number of words per student was 588.57 whereas in Group 2 it was 515. Here again, linguistic proficiency did not seem to affect quantity. Analysis deriving from the data was organized in the following way:

Agency Most reports in Group 1 presented the first person plural and the words group and the class as agents of the processes carried out in class. For example: 10102: ... we began to discuss ... The first group said ... The class got to the conclusion ... We discussed ... another group suggested ... we said.

In Group 2, most students perceived the teacher as agent: 21702: ... Mrs X read ... she asked ... The students answered ... Mrs X asked ... The students answered ...

Both groups’ depiction of the agents illustrate clearly who dominated each class. Their reaction to each of the two approaches can be seen in the following statements: 10302: ... The lesson was extraordinary and everybody talked. A greater deal of interaction was observed throughout today’s lesson ... 10502: ... all students participate and discuss about it. This class was conducted by the students ... 10402: ... Mrs X almost didn’t participated ... 10901: ... The classes we had before were great but we just paid attention on what the teacher were saying. This time I could give my interpretation and I could discuss with my friends without the professor’s interference ... 20202: ... She always lead us to find the answer, but sometimes would be good if she let us try to make the exercises in groups ... 21302: ... I am not sure if we can come to a conclusion about what was the first text because we were being guided by Mrs X or because it was actually easier ... 20802: ... Everybody understood the main idea but there were some problems in the development of this part such as lack of time to discuss the answers and participation of a restricted group of students, which made the class a bit boring ... 20102: ... We discussed the theme in a very superficial way. I didn’t like the class ...


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Multiple interpretations As a consequence of having more time to discuss the text in groups, students in Group 1 came up with many different interpretations and tried to negotiate to arrive to a consensus: 10202: ... My group found that we had a kind of debate in the class as each group had had a different interpretation. It was very interesting because, even though the interpretations were different, all the groups found the poem was about prejudice ... 11402: ... Back to the question on the theme of the poem, students reached the end of the discussion by providing five possible contexts. One group thought the poem was about North and South Americans divided by economical and political stages ... Another group considered the black and white ever discussed theme, in which black people are said to be inferior when compared to white people ... Finally, others mentioned the contrast between rich/poor, employer/ employee and Americans/immigrants ... This activity helped students talk about the many interpretations a poem can have and enabled them to develop their power of argumentation by using examples on the text that conformed their opinion ...

Whereas 11 students mentioned the possibility of multiple interpretations in Group 1, only four made reference to it on Group 2. Here is one example: 20402: ... because she led our interpretation a lot, I feel that it tends to make us stop thinking and only wait for her conclusion ... Our background, our conceptions, our daily life plus the author’s background, his historical time, his life and his conceptions lead us to a more realistic and complete analysis of a poem. It is impossible to have a standard interpretation ... Mrs X may lead less and listen more to our own points of view.

Timing Although there was little time left for producing the poems in class, Group 1 did not complain. They either reported that the class had been well-timed or did not mention this issue at all. On the other hand, although Group 2 had had enough time for all the activities, they were dissatisfied with the rhythm. Many complained they had had little time (20601; 20702) for their work.

Behaviour Although Group 2 did not mention this aspect, some students in Group 1 acknowledged that the class had helped them change their attitude: 10702: ... I participated much more than the normal. I’m shy and I changed my behaviour without notice ... 12102: ... As I am very shy, for the first time I could participate of the Mrs X’s questions because I was working in groups ...


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It is interesting to point out that very few students in Group 1 mentioned the fact that they were being filmed and observed. Those who did only made a quick reference in the opening paragraph and never referred to that fact again. Reports from Group 2, however, showed they were quite uncomfortable with the setting: 20102: ... The fact that we were being watched made me feel uncomfortable and I also think the teacher, herself, was uncomfortable, even though she tried to ignore them. Nevertheless it didn’t prevent us from participating and giving our conclusions ... 20702: ... there was a strange feeling throughout the class as we were being tested even though we weren’t ...

The difference in reaction may signal less focus, interest and involvement in Group 2. Ironically, the video also recorded a lot of noise in the corridors when Group 1 was carrying out their work, but they seemed so involved in the activity that it did not distract them.

Students’ overall evaluation of the class Group 1 was unanimous in their enthusiasm. They expressed their pleasure openly by using expressions like ‘the best class ever’ or ‘dynamic’. However, very few in Group 2 made reference to the quality of the class or expressed their appreciation. They just referred to the fact that it was different or mentioned their enjoyment of the text selected for discussion but not of the teaching strategies. They were more laconic and focused their comments on the descriptive level. While all the students in Group 1 suggested that the teacher should repeat the procedures and the activities in the following classes, Group 2, without having had access to what had occurred in the first workshop, suggested that the teacher should resort to strategies similar to the ones she had used with Group 1.

5 Conclusion One of the problems with literature teaching and pedagogical stylistics has been their divorce from theories of education. It is crucial that teachers think not only about what they teach but also about the social conditions in which they do it. They need to know what kinds of individuals they are helping to shape and not only whether they fulfilled the demands of the curriculum. In this sense, pedagogies constitute a form of social and cultural criticism where teacher-talk is replaced with problem-posing strategies and focus on research development rather than instruction. Critical pedagogy may help promote Literary Awareness in an EFL stylistics class if: (a) Students’ voices help inform more effective teaching strategies (in the illustration of two workshops described earlier, students are encouraged to criticize the class and provide suggestions). (b) The teacher acts as mediator and constant learner, criticizing and transforming his/her understanding in response to the understandings of students (illustrated by instructor’s conduct with Group 1). Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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(c) Both teacher and student look into his/her practice to check what happened, how it worked, what has to be changed (in the illustration, the teacher works also as researcher and critic of her own practice and students are asked to comment on their experiences of the workshop as a whole). (d) There is an attempt to reduce the hierarchical position between teachers and students reducing authoritarian structures (students are invited to suggest changes to the subsequent meetings and the teacher incorporates those suggestions). (e) There is an attempt to create an intimate tie between feelings, knowledge and interest (by means of the steps proposed). (f) Pedagogical practice takes the classroom as a space for acquiring emotional, critical, and cultural autonomy (as students comment on the process of creation of their own poems). In sum, critical pedagogy aims at developing methods and approaches that allow the individual to learn how to live in society and to contribute effectively and in a constructive way by being able to interrogate. Once one knows how to ask, the answer becomes irrelevant. We do not need students’ answers. We need their questions. Instead of prescribing authors and books, the teacher may ask them to investigate what they think would be worth studying and why – what their choice would imply, what they would have left out, why it is relevant to them, and how that experience would change their real world. In a word, the teacher thinks together with the students how to teach and what gets taught. Critical pedagogy escapes patterning. It demands creative action and is basically experimental. Students are expected to arrive at a critical reflection and self-awareness, becoming more responsible for their own learning. Empowering implies an association between research and re-learning. As Shor points out (1992: 15), ‘Human beings do not invent themselves in a vacuum, and society cannot be made unless people create it together. The goals of this pedagogy are to relate personal growth to public life, by developing strong skills, academic knowledge, habits of inquiry, and critical curiosity about society, power, inequality, and change’. Literary education has been resistant to change, and critical pedagogy is far from being a universal panacea. However, it may be a useful way to make texts meaningful to students and help them become participating citizens. There is one clear limitation to all that has been said about critical pedagogy, though: its aims and methods. We need politically-balanced, flexible and tolerant teachers who are conversant with the major theoretical issues. This may or may not be merely a dream, but what can be grounded in reality are pedagogical stylisticians who invest in empirical research to verify what is actually happening in the classroom and whether the orientation that is informing the practice actually works. The actions described in this article illustrate that those involved with classroom activities should attempt to make sense of the pedagogical experience. Notes 1 In the original: ‘Acredita-se geralmente que sou autor deste estranho vocabulário ´conscientização´ por ser este o conceito central de minhas idéias sobre a educação. Na realidade, foi criado por uma equipe de professores do Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros por volta Downloaded from http://lal.sagepub.com at CAPES on March 8, 2010

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de 1964 ... Ao ouvir pela primeira vez a palavra conscientização, percebi imediatamente a profundidade de seu significado, porque estou absolutamente convencido de que a educação, como prática da liberdade, é um ato de conhecimento, uma aproximação crítica da realidade’ (1980: 25). 2 In the original: ‘Só existe saber na invenção, na reinvenção, na busca inquieta, impaciente, permanente, que os homens fazem no mundo, com o mundo e com os outros’ (1987: 58). 3 ‘From Paper to Screen’ was a joint effort of the REDES Research group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in collaboration with the TELEMAR Institute of Education. 4 The students’ comments are presented in their own words, as originally written in English, and uncorrected by the authors.

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Biography Olivia Fialho,Office of Interdisciplinary Studies – Faculty of Arts, 1–63 Humanities Centre, Edmonton, AB,Canada, T6G 2E5, University of Alberta. [email: [email protected]] Appendix I:Text selected I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, An’ eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll sit at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me,


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Zyngier and Fialho ‘Eat in the kitchen,’ Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed. I, too, am America. (Langston Hughes, 1925) Appendix II: Worksheet

Please get together in groups of three, discuss and answer the following questions. After 30 minutes, you will be asked to tell to the whole group what conclusions you have arrived at. 1 Read the poem ‘I, too, sing America’. 2 Underline the verbs and check their tenses. Which other words or phrases contribute to the idea of time? 3 Can you arrange the verbs and words you have underlined in contrasts of time? 4 Who is ‘they’ in line 3? What relationship is established between I and they? 5 How can you explain brother in this context? 6 Line 2 sets a comparison – between who? How can you describe what is being compared? 7 What can too tell us? Why use too? Who, then, are the participants? Who else does the poem imply? 8 What is the function of but in line 5? 9 What do you think was the situation of the poem? What can you tell about social classes in this text? 10 Who is I? Male or female? What can you say about I’s feelings? 11 What does the poem predict? 12 Compare the first and the last lines. What has been changed? Why? 13 Why should they be ashamed (line 17)? 14 What do you think has caused the situation described in the poem? Is it specific to one context? 15 What do you think was the intention of the poet? What do you think led him to write the poem? 16 The poem was written in 1925. How modern is its theme? Do you think it is relevant to you?
