A língua inglesa em contexto brasileiro: as tatuagens escritas.

Abstract

Since it is the current lingua franca, the English language is present in the everyday life of people from many different nationalities around the world, including in Brazil. When we observe the Brazilian urban area, it is possible to identify English being used in different kinds of purposes, such as names of stores and products, for example. One of the places where English is also used is on people’s skin. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the use of English in Brazilian context through the reasons given by tattooed people to the following question: “Why did you choose English to your tattoo?”, and answering this question is the general objective of this study. Through the answers given by the interviewees, it was possible to divide the corpus of this study in two main categories: the hegemony of English, which is based on authors such as Rajagopalan (2005), Dendrinos (2004) and Giblin (2005), and translating taken as a distorting act, which is based on authors such as Ricoeur (2011) and Berman (2006). Besides, it is also presented an overview about the theme of written tattoos, and also topics that concern text genre and medium, a brief consideration of the tattoo history and some aspects related to the use of marginalized text genres in the classroom. This study also presents the description and analysis of two classes of English for Specific Purposes, which were performed to put in practice conceptions that were discussed in the theoretical background, demonstrating how the work with this genre can be interesting to a language class. By suggesting a study based on the analysis of tattoos, this work aims to demonstrate how tattoos, a means of human expression that crosses time and space boundaries, can contribute to the language classroom, since it is an environment where the teacher can encompass the many ways that people use language in their daily life, and, therefore, broaden notions about language function in society. And, since the tattoos are in English, we mainly seek to reflect upon one more means of verbal expression where the English language is commonly present in Brazilian context.