Verses that humanize: poetry, cognition and humanization in the classroom

Abstract

This paper describes and reflects on the underlying cognitive processes that may signal the exercise of humanizing practices in the written production of poetry, by 8th grade students enrolled at a private school in Rio de Janeiro. Qualitative in nature and with an interpretative bias, the analysis is based on Candido’s concept of humanization (2011), as well as on theories of Cognitive Linguistics, especially Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1977, 2006), Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymies (Lakoff; Johnson, 1980, 2002), and Conceptual Integration (Fauconnier; Turner, 2002). Out of a total of 57 poems generated by the students, two were selected to exemplify such processes, especially due to their relationship with themes that continually populate our daily lives: failures in education and bullying at school. For example, in the first case, the author’s indignation with the educational system is motivated by the vital relationship of cause-effect, because if the educational system is flawed (cause), how can we live and progress? The indignation (effect) emerges by blending, through the vital relationship of property, a characteristic of the lyrical self with which the author identifies herself. At the same time, the mental spaces activated by the poem and processed in the conceptual integration network reflect the humanizing character attributed to literary practice in the classroom. It is therefore theorized that the more teachers humanize the classroom through the production of poetry, the greater the motivation in the learning process. In other words, both poetry and Cognitive Linguistics have a role to play in the language classroom.
Keywords: Poetry. Humanization. Cognition. Language teaching. Classroom.