“Brazilians need to be studied”, or “Brazilians need to participate in dialogue”? For discursive practices that move the notion of popularization of language sciences

Abstract

In this text I revisit four publications of the extension project Coffee with Method: Strategies for popularizing scientific thought applied to language studies (CAp-UERJ): 1) Coffee, Method, Popularization: an introduction (Guimarães, 2023a); 2) The popularization of scientific discourse as a way to combat denialism: Critical Discourse Analysis in perspective (Guimarães, 2023b); 3) Experience report from practice to theory: a textual-discursive extensionist experience (Guimarães, Oliveira, 2024); and 4) An extensionist experience in the experience report: the (notion of) popularization in perspective (Oliveira; Guimarães, 2024). While reflecting on popularization, the works echo voices-praxis that pass/have passed through the Project: researchers from different subareas of Languages/Linguistics (among others), (post)graduate students and exclusive teachers of basic education. Starting from the revisitation, I argue in favor of a change that should precede popularizing actions: a discursive resignification, in the political and scientific spheres, regarding: a) the extension projects/programs that work with/for the popularization of linguistics; and b) the publication of these actions. The text is an invitation to think that a plan of action the popularization of linguistics is not limited to expanding the fields of knowledge to be popularized – so that popularization does not become (continue/be) itself a new project (political-party-currency), but a transformational attitude.