Political resistance without friendly fire: for a linguistic ideology of mixtures in our revolt

Abstract

Nowadays we witness the invasion of a belligerent culture in different areas of social life, including politics. As right-wing populism spreads worldwide, a close look at the way language has been used by political leaders and their supporters is necessary (HODGES, 2020). The same can be said about the linguistic beliefs that guide our interpretations of the forms and uses of languages ​​and our ways of triggering political resistance. In this work, we analyze three tweets that criticize the discursive performances of Abraham Weintraub, former Minister of Education of the government of Jair Bolsonaro, when he violated the standard form of the Portuguese language. We aim to investigate the linguistic ideologies that guide such criticisms, assessing the effects they have on political projects interested in defending the rights of socially marginalized groups. For our analyses, we use iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure (GAL & IRVINE, 2019) as theoretical-analytical constructs. The results of this study indicate that modes of resistance guided by linguistic ideologies that support a pure ideal of language endorse negative meanings associated with popular linguistic resources and, by extension, with socially excluded groups. We argue in favor of linguistic ideologies that embrace different ways of communicating (PINTO, 2013; FABRÍCIO & MOITA LOPES, 2019) as a possible approach to thinking about practices of political resistance that are, in fact, committed to inclusive and social justice agendas.