Editorial

ANTONIO CARLOS RODRIGUES DE AMORIM; CARLOS SKLIAR

REVISTA BRASILEIRA DE EDUCAçãO

Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação

Año: 2017

1413-2478

In a broad sense, and in an understanding shared by many, language is asocially agreed upon system of signs for representing reality. We know, however,that it is also through sensations, gestures, emotions and other forms of languagethat humans communicate with each other and describe and understand the world.Moreover, it is through language and with language that we construct, deconstructand reconstruct the world in different manners. Umberto Eco, in his celebratednovel O nome da Rosa1 [The Name of the Rose], understands that although allthings disappear, of them, we conserve their purest names. The very title of thenovel, according to Eco, refers to the saying nulla rosa est (there is no rose), which demonstrates how language can speak both of existing things as well as things that have been suppressed or do not exist.