In a world characterized by exacerbated capitalist exploitation, political repression, and socioeconomic stratification, is there any reason left for hope? Silva & Lee respond that hope not only continues to exist but is also actively and collectively practised by those facing the most hopeless conditions. They showcase this by exploring favelas, the deprivileged urban settlements in Brazil where residents—faveladas/os—have historically faced police violence, illegal activities, and political discrimination against Black, women, and LGBT communities. From a sociolinguistic perspective, Silva & Lee document how faveladas/os create hope in and through language to resist these challenges and push for transformative alternatives.
To do so, Silva & Lee revisit philosophical, anthropological, and sociolinguistic traditions on hope and propose an ethnographic conceptualization (chapter 1). They argue that hope is neither a universal, predictable state of the future nor a relativist, inconsequential construct. Instead, it constitutes a situated reorientation of knowledge ‘intertwined with a dynamic, collective, embodied, and affective flow of activities’ (46) that bring about concrete material and semiotic changes in the present. This conceptualization entails a performative approach to hope, for which Silva & Lee resort to citizen sociolinguistics and view hope as invoked in the communicative practices by specific groups of individuals—as agentive ‘authors of knowledge’—for specific purposes on the ground.
Building on this conceptualization, Silva & Lee describe three sociolinguistic moves of hope that feature in the activist events by faveladas/os. The first is the re-establishment of temporality in describing the histories of faveladas/os during ongoing movements—‘hope in the present’ (chapter 3). Marielle Franco, an activist politician from favelas, for example, artistically shifts pronouns from I to we in her speeches to reframe the individual incidents of racism and sexism in the past as structural inequality faced by all faveladas/os in the present. After Marielle's assassination, protesters recast the temporality of her life as present through slogans that underline her continuous influence (e.g. ‘Marielle is a seed’).
Second, faveladas/os create and circulate papo reto, an activist register promoting direct and locally valorised language choices that are most recognizable to faveladas/os while highlighting the aspects of inequality convoluted by the government—‘the enregisterment of hope’ (chapter 4). This register is widely mobilized by faveladas/os to share community information (e.g. disseminating warnings of shootings online) and mark faveladas/os identity and solidarity in political debates (e.g. challenging reactionary politicians with ‘straight talk’).
Third, faveladas/os rescale their activist endeavours from idealist abstractions to real-life changes through pedagogical practices—‘scaling hope’ (chapter 5). This involves recontextualization of faveladas/os’ past (e.g. interpreting the slavery history as a reason for fighting for voice) and generation of locally authentic societal data (e.g. statistics of shootings), emphasising the immediate relevance and applicability of community knowledge production.
Through this account, Silva & Lee demonstrate how language provides a unique perspective to understand hope as both the reason and resource for social change. Their work teaches us about hoping in hopelessness and how researchers can trace this process through individuals’ most intricate and high-stakes social pursuits.
