Raquel Rosa de SOUZA and Ariovaldo Lopes PEREIRA
Rev. EntreLinguas, Araraquara, v. 10, n. esp. 1, e024023, 2024. e-ISSN: 2447-3529
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29051/el.v10iesp.1.18800 5
our humanity and immersed in our senses and feelings, in the contexts that surround us (Sousa
Santos, 2019).
Therefore, it is necessary for us to position ourselves as effective human beings,
constituted in affectivity, recognizing our subjectivity, that is, understanding our self, the
conscious and unconscious thoughts, and emotions that shape our conception of who we are,
how we see ourselves and how we see others and the world through discourses and cultures
(Weedon, 1997; Woodward, 2000). This conception aligns with what Fortes (2019, p. 73, our
translation) understands as subjectivity: "the meanings, emotions, and thoughts that we
experience in various social contexts and that, in turn, provide meaning, materializing our
realities and our identities".
In a study on the role of emotions in the practices of an English teacher, Oliveira
(2021) proposes a different look at this construct, considering that emotions "are discursively
produced and, therefore, are not internal and individual, but are constructed in the doing,
through social relations" (Oliveira, 2021, p. 82, our translation). Turning the focus specifically
to language teaching, the author understands that "teaching a foreign language involves a
complex network of cognitive, relational, and emotional resources, as only theoretical
knowledge of teaching a language is not sufficient to deal with complex situations that the
nature of their work involves" (Oliveira, 2021, p. 83, our translation).
It is important to emphasize that in the research reported here, we treat affectivity and
subjectivity as inseparable concepts. We corroborate Pennycook's view (2017), which
understands affectivity as individuals' subjectivity, meaning all the complexity involving their
stories, memories, life, and local culture. Therefore, in this work, we take affectivity as a
spectrum of feelings and emotions that envelop us, rooted in the core of our being and
influencing how we perceive the world around us (Jordão, 2019), and as something that is
intertwined with our social experiences and modulates the internal and external relationships
of human beings (Aragão, 2011).
Affectivity is clearly enveloped in feelings, emotions, and identity constructions that
are only possible to be perceived and discussed in a process of linguistic education that takes
into account the complexities involving the culturally and politically situated subject in the
world, after all, "the other is not a pure identity, nor a mere difference" (Skliar, 2003, p. 44,
our translation). According to this understanding, one cannot speak of affectivity in English
language teaching and disregard the subjectivity of individuals. According to Mastrella-de-
Andrade (2011, p. 12, our translation), affective factors go beyond individual aspects since