Dialogue between Language and Literature: A dialogical analysis of Gloria Anzaldúa’s El Sonavabitche and its implications

This article aims at discussing the role linguistic studies play in literary studies based on the theoretical framework of the Circle (Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and Medvedev) and the implications in undergraduate English Language Teacher Education Programs of adopting the conception of (literary) language propounded by the Russian authors. Methodologically, away from theoretical extremes, viz., formalism and social determinism, not only does it present the proposal for literary analysis suggested by the Circle, by means of which the linguistic material of the work strives for social significance, but, based on this understanding, it also points to some structural elements of the poem El sonavabitche by Gloria Anzaldúa. This poem, selected as a representative of the Chicano Literature, a segment of contemporary American Literature, brings the experience of illegal Mexican workers in the United States close to that of slaves in that country (social significance). These elements referred especially to the crossing of the workers, their “animalization,” and the “hunt” of fugitives. Based on this theoretical-analytical work, we perceived that the study of literature written in English in undergraduate English Language Teacher Education Programs in the confluence between language and literature mobilizes a huge amount of material by teachers and students and that the dialogue between these areas is fundamental to the analysis/understanding of literary works in their original texts, which even allows the knowledge of the language as a system to be enriched.

Keywords: the (Bakhtin) Circle, language and literature in the classroom, El Sonavabitche, Language Teacher Education programs.