From Discriminating to Discrimination The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity

This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to try to answer the question of how do we, as human beings, go from the socially neutral linguistic act of discriminating external stimuli to the socially loaded act of promoting social discrimination though language? This contributed volume brings together works presented at the international event “From Discriminating to Discrimination – The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity”. This was an online event hosted and organized by the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU), Germany, in partnership with São Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil, that brought together lecturers from different universities around the world.

During the event, linguists, psychologists, language teachers, social workers and pedagogues got together to discuss how discriminating can be recognized as a natural and important ability of the human being in the early stages of life and, after that, how to avoid discriminatory acts againstothers. The debates held online took into account the important and necessary dialogue between linguistics and other social sciences to discuss the role played by language as a form of building subjectivity and teaching practices that can contribute to minimize discrimination and promote integration and acceptance in a broad sense, understanding the preponderant role of language in recognizing what is different (discriminating), without diminishing or excluding it (discrimination).

From Discriminating to Discrimination: The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity will help linguists, psychologists, educators, social workers and a broad range of social scientists working with cognitive, linguistic and educational studies understand the path taken by differentiation, from the beginning of the child's language development – when discrimination (of sounds, gestures, etc.) is essential for the acquisition of language to occur –, until the moment when differentiation, discrimination, ceases to be an essential factor and becomes a means of social segregation.

Chapter 1: FROM SOUND DISCRIMINATION TO SOUND IDENTIFICATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILD DIRECTED SPEECH AND INTERACTIONAL CUES DURING LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.- Chapter 2: LANUAGE PERCEPTION DEVELOPMENT.- Chapter 3: LANGUAGE, SUBJECTIVITY AND ALTERITY: HUMOR IN CHILDREN'S DISCOURSE.- Chapter 4: DISCRIMINATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT COMMUNICATION AND ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY IN PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES.- Chapter 5: DOING RESEARCH WITH CHILDREN - CASE STUDIES CHALLENGING BIAS OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD.- Chapter 6: PRESERVATION OF IDENTITY AND SUBJECTIVITY: PHILOSOPHY, LINGUISTICS AND SOCIAL WORK IN DIALOG TO FIGHT DISCRIMINATION.- Chapter 7: A REFLECTION ABOUT THE HISTORICAL COURSE OF THE BRAZILIAN SIGN LANGUAGE: SCHOOL, OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS AND FIGHTING DISCRIMINATION.- Chapter 8: CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN TEACHING AND LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES: OPENING UP TO DIALOGUE AND UNDERSTANDING PLURAL IDENTITIES.- Chapter 9: PORTUGUESE AS A WELCOMING LANGUAGE: BREAKING LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES.- Chapter 10: A DISCUSSION ON LITERACY FOR YOUNG AND ADULTS: LITERATURE CLASSICS IN DIALOGUE WITH PAULO FREIRE.- Chapter 11: THE CHALLENGES OF BILDUNG IN THE ANTHROPOCENE IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE OPPRESSED AND THE LITERACY.- Afterword.

Alessandra Del Ré is a professor at the Department of Linguistics, Literature and Classics of the São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Araraquara, Brazil, and has worked as visiting professor at the Université de Montpellier 3 (UM3), France. She holds a Master's and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of São Paulo (USP), and completed part of her PhD in France, at the Université René Descartes (Sorbonne/Paris V). She has also developed a post-doctoral research at Université Paris X/MoDyCo/COLAJE. She has experience in linguistics, with an emphasis on language acquisition, working mainly on themes involving children's humor and bilingualism, within a Bakhtinian-based dialogic-discursive perspective.