Event Details

A DeLC Research seminar with Dr José Peixoto Coelho de Souza (University of Manchester) who will be giving a talk on the topic: 'Song literacy in language teaching: from theory to practice'.

This talk explores the pedagogical potential of song literacy (Coelho de Souza, 2015) as a framework for enhancing language teaching practices. Situated at the intersection of literacy as a social practice (Street, 1984; Soares, 2006), literary literacy (Cosson, 2006), and musical education (Swanwick, 1994), song literacy offers a comprehensive approach to understanding and engaging with songs as multifaceted cultural artifacts. This perspective emphasizes the interplay between music, lyrics, and broader sociocultural contexts in shaping the meaning-making process. To illustrate this concept, an in-depth analysis of the Brazilian song "Cotidiano" by Chico Buarque, composed and released during the country's military dictatorship, is presented. The analysis demonstrates how the song's musical elements and lyrics convey complex social commentary, and how new meanings may arise through a more thorough understanding of the song's historical context. Subsequently, six sets of song-based teaching materials grounded in the concept of song literacy are reviewed and analysed: Mattos (2018), Coelho de Souza (2019), Alves (2019), Parisotto; Schatter (2020), Cavalcanti (2021), and Guedes; Schlatter (2022), including one based on "Cotidiano". These materials demonstrate how song literacy can help shape pedagogical practices that foster learning that goes beyond linguistic analysis, encompassing the multimodality, social implications, and discursive dimensions of songs. The findings underscore the potential of song literacy as a pedagogical framework to enrich and enhance language teaching practices.

Please join us either in person in County Main Seminar Room 2 or online via Teams.