Sink or swim? Responsible situated agency constructed by socioeconomically underprivileged students of English in neoliberal Brazil

Abstract

This article discusses the results of a four-year investigation on the neoliberal challenges faced by socioeconomically underprivileged students in Brazil who were majoring in English teaching. It is a qualitative study that employs the concept of language as a sociocultural and dialogical practice as well as the concepts of responsibility and agency; it also examines the relationship between these students’ experiences and neoliberalism as seen in language education. The data generated by questionnaires, students’ narratives, and semi-structuredinterviews reveal that the participants’ initiatives to engage themselves both in and outside academic interactional contexts acted as counter-centralizing forces. By exercising their responsible situated agency towards their English language appropriation process and teaching practice, they acted dialogically against neoliberal challenges understood here as hierarchical centripetal forces that constrain their access to different kinds of capital. The study outcomes suggest that decolonial and self-decolonial practices should be heightened in the second language education program in question so that both undergraduates and faculty can confront traits of marginalization and self-marginalization resulted from the hegemony of neoimperial English. In doing so, more students can become part of “discursive actions” that foster their responsible situated agency towards a more egalitarian society.