Language and culture in the English language classroom: what Monica's Gang comics can teach us

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the relation between language and culture in Monica’s Gang comics in the classroom of English as a foreign language. Another important objective was to verify if the students of a public school in the suburbs of Goiânia could develop an intercultural competence through the reading of Monica’s Gang comics in English. This research is characterized as a case study (LUDKE; ANDRÉ, 1986; MOREIRA; CALLEFE, 2006) and is based on the theories about interculturality and the process of intercultural communication in the foreign language classroom (DAMEN, 1987; KRAMSCH, 2001a; FIGUEREDO, 2007). The data discussed were obtained through activities done in the classroom and interviews. The results reveal that the English version of Monica’s Gang undergoes some linguistic and cultural changes to be meaningful to representatives of the English language and its cultures. Also, the findings point out that the learners under investigation need more significant knowledge about English as a language-culture as well as about their own cultures involved in the dialogue with the English language learning process.