Letramentos’s Updates

Being attentive to synesthesia in the classroom: pre-condition to a critical literacy approach?

There are two common-sense assumptions which might be considered here: firstly, meaning doesn't strictly rely on verbal language as traditional Linguistics have long stated; secondly, multimodality doesn't rely on new technologies. Would synesthesia, then, be something "natural" in meaning making processes which has long been put aside in traditional schooling? How can we benefit from synesthesia in the classroom? The way I see it, synesthesia is out there in the classroom being up to the teacher to attentively notice them and critically use those moments in favor of an inclusive, ethical education by asking herself/himself "How are my students responding to the various semiotic modes around them?" Some of the aspects to be noticed might refer to the way students interpret images in textbooks (do students view those images as "mere" representation of a verbal form or do they conceive of them as "texts" to be critically interpreted through a visual literacy approach?); also the way they interpret their own gestural, bodily languages in a classroom (are students aware of those gestural architect that happens in a classroom? How do they make meaning whenever there is laughter, irony, sarcasm, repugnance or even silence in their behavior? What would these reveal about themselves?). These are a few real examples I valued during my PhD research: by that time, as a researcher, I tried to grasp the way (be them verbal, visual, oral, gestural) those students responded to the semiotic modes they were "exposed to" in order to use them as a starting point to a critically-oriented approach to English language teaching. Much of my interpretative analysis relied on those synesthetic responses and to me they were extremely relevant.