Between words and silence: A semiotic and sociocritical analysis of the language and literature teacher in the films Freedom Writers (2007), Entre les murs (2008), and Detachment (2011).

Abstract

This article addresses the representation of language and literature teachers in three contemporary films set in socially marginalized contexts: Freedom Writers (2007), Entre les murs (2008), and Detachment (2011). It starts from the assumption that, through literary teaching and the exercise of autobiographical writing, the teacher figures constructed in these film narratives operate as agents of subjectivation, humanization, and emancipation for their students. From a sociocritical approach, the analysis focuses on the initial sequences (incipit) of each work in order to explore the symbolic configurations of the teaching role, the pedagogical models involved, the institutional tensions represented, and the writing practices in the classroom. The study draws on tools from structural semiotics—in particular, the actantial model and narrative programs (Greimas, 1993)—as well as theoretical frameworks from critical pedagogy (Freire, 1994), the sociology of education (Bourdieu, 1997), and intersectional analysis (Hooks, 2021). Together, these frameworks allow us to propose a reading of the teacher as a liminal, political, and affective figure whose pedagogical interventions challenge the structural conditions of exclusion.