Quem eu sou? Identidade em contextos de língua não-nativa

Abstract

This study investigated how individuals residing in non-native language contexts negotiate their identity, understood here as a semiotic effect of narrative processes aimed at organizing world experiences and achieving recognizability within a shared symbolic field. Grounded in semiotic-cultural psychology, this study analyzes the trajectories of four participants undergoing migratory processes who utilize a non-native language in their daily lives. This is a qualitative study based on a microgenetic analysis of narratives produced during individual comprehensive interviews. The results demonstrate that the migratory experience implies a reorganization of the conditions under which identity is constituted, shaping what is termed a process of proculturation. It was observed that the perceived symbolic insufficiency of the non-native language to express affective nuances generates tensions that reinforce identification with the native language and cultural context of origin, particularly with "being Brazilian." In this sense, the valorization of Brazilianness occurs in a situated manner, functioning as a strategy for the continuity of the self within the migratory context, while not necessarily maintaining the same function in the original context, thereby reinforcing the relational and dynamic nature of identity.