The learning and acquisition processes of German as second language and Portuguese as heritage and foreign language: the place of intersubjectivity

Abstract

Cognitively complex constructions are difficult to grasp for every individual who is not involved with the community socio-cultural logic, so this project aims to investigate the appropriation of linguistic constructions that encode inaccuracy - which are complex - by individuals in limited, partial or almost complete contact with the sociocultural context of the language to be learned. As informants, this project involves individuals - whose mother tongue is German - in the learning process of Portuguese as heritage language and of Portuguese as foreign language, in addition to individuals that speak Portuguese as mother tongue and learn German as second language. We hypothesize that the diversification of contexts is essential for the recognition, the understanding and the use of specific linguistic constructions. We assume further that this concept can be understood only by individuals who are linguistically more mature and more involved with the target language's culture and that greater access to informal and spontaneous inputs would provide the individual a greater spectrum in the gradation of inaccuracy. The methods planned to answer the questions involve (i) the observation of Portuguese and German classes at schools, (ii) interviews with teachers and the informants, (iii) data collection from interactions, in different contexts, between the informants and others, in which they use the target language, (iv) application of perception, understand and use tests to the informants, which presuppose the verification of the level of consciousness through the syntactic codification of innacuracy, and therefore intersubjectivity. We purpose qualitative, quantitative and comparative analyzes of data in order to check the level of complexity of the strategies employed in syntactic codification of inaccuracy. (AU)