Highly able mathematics learners from a pragmatic perspective of language

Resumen

This paper presents part of a post-structuralist research that aimed to analyze language games in forms of life of children regarded as high ability learners, thus evidencing the games that have been valued in school processes of selection and education enhancement. The work here presented was developed with the use of ethnographyinspired techniques involving three students from the Municipal Education Network of Porto Alegre (Brazil), their regular teachers and their SIR/AH teacher. Through the approximation between Wittgenstein’s notion of language games and Foucault’s notion of games of truth, it was possible to notice that in the core of these games there are rules of legitimation of discourses forged in power relations established among subjects in historical and social settings. With the approximation of these ideas, the expression power-language game was coined to support the discussions proposed in this study. It was concluded that high ability subjects are an effect of a discursive practice, since the ways of being and acting give them existence. It was also possible to notice that the identification and selection of these subjects occur mainly through comparative and classificatory processes.