Bullying language: behind the aggression

Abstract

This study looked for a bullying language understanding in a Colombian context with seventh-grade students who put together and/or relate their social and linguistic backgrounds to create a unique language system around bullying, which effected their coexistence and the foreign language learning process. The problem came out when observing that the class time was reduced because it was necessary to give a solution to bullying situations, finding that they did not conceive certain situations as bullying, unlike adults such as teachers and parents. The following study is qualitative, descriptive, interpretative following the principles of ethnographic research and it is designed to understand, describe and discover the strategies that the students use in their speech acts immersed in the bullying language. It relates how students through their second language classes got aware of their linguistic creations and how some of them were used violent and aggressively to maintain a social hierarchy or to keep a power relationship between them. By categorizing their behaviors and reactions some possible students’ roles are found when facing bullying situations. Finally, it is proposed how, through the ‘Community language learning – CLL’, motivating environments can be created for learning English through the work of everyday problems in the school.