"LEVY’S FRUIT OF THE LEMON" (1999) AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY

The slave-system, with extant repercussions on contemporary society, is accountable for the globalized exclusion scheme not only in the ex-colonies but even in the former metropolises. Official History is subverted by re-narrating what happened to non-Europeans during the last five hundred years and in Fruit of the Lemon black British author Andrea Levy utilizes orature to trigger the subjectification process in Faith Jackson, a British-born black female whose parents hail from Jamaica. Orature involve the construction of a new subject through revelations on the daily struggle for work, friendship, community-building, racial inclusion and the dire facts of the Caribbean diaspora. Since transindividual social tensions affect the British black subject, native or immigrant, the novel denounces the immigrants’ “amnesia” as a policy and the myth of a British multicultural society accepting peacefully ex-colonial subjects. Results show that remembrance through orature is a powerful means of subjectification and identity, besides being an antidote against a racialized society. In Fruit of the Lemon Levy installs an agonistic stance in which the authority of hegemonic discourse is subverted and a new liberating and hybridized discourse produced.

THE PRACTICE OF ORAL PRODUCTION CONCERNING THE CONTINUING EDUCATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

The scope of the present study is to comprehend the professional identity of a group of English Teachers. The research sought the answer to the following question: How does the mastery of the speaking aspect of the English Language influence teacher’s professional identity? The choice of the topic arose during a continuing education course offered by the authors of the present work, whose partakers were EFL teachers. The research took into consideration both, experiences observed during the continuing education course and relevant data collected with the help of an open questionnaire, which participants answered at the end of the course. Contemporary literature also supported the conclusions concerning teacher’s professional identity and its close relation to two important factors: the way teachers perceive themselves and how others see them. Regarding the English Language Teacher professional identity, the participants of the research stated that professionals from this area are not as valued as they should; in their opinion, the lack of oral fluency of most teachers is a key factor on the existence of a professional misrepresentation. Results have shown that, for them, oral fluency is essential for academic and social recognition of their profession. All participants stressed the need of continuing education in terms of oral practice, due to the lack of opportunity of practicing the English Language daily. They also pointed that teachers with limited-fluency tend to avoid the use of the target language in order to “hide their deficit” on EL; on the other hand, teachers that are fluent in English “feel safer and with self-steam”. We have concluded, from our research, that the oral fluency is indeed important for the constitution of English Language teacher’s professional identity, exerting a positive influence on it. On the other hand, the fact of not being fluent in English Language contributes for the so called “teacher’s professional identity crisis”.