DANIEL DO NASCIMENTO E SILVA

[Curriculum Vitae – Lattes] [dnsfortal@gmail.com] [Academia.edu]

 [CNPq Research Productivity Fellow (PQ-1D)]

Research

My research lies at the intersection of linguistic anthropology, applied linguistics, and sociolinguistics, with a particular focus on language, violence, activism, and the collective construction hope. My current work examines how activists in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and other peripheral territories in Brazil and beyond use language, digital media, and translocal networks to confront systemic violence and create alternative political futures.
A central concern of this work is the relationship between communication and (in)security: how violence is mediated and made communicable, but also how activists develop alternative communicative infrastructures and forms of knowledge in response to it. More broadly, my research engages with discourse circulation, linguistic ideologies, literacy, language contact, and the pragmatics of social and political life.
Together with Jerry Won Lee, I am the author of Language as Hope (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The book develops an account of hope as a semiotic practice through ethnographic work with favela activists in Rio de Janeiro. It was the winner of the 2026 Book Prize by the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL).

Profile

I am Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. I hold a BA in Language and Literature from the Universidade Estadual do Ceará and an MA and PhD in Linguistics from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), where I worked under the supervision of Kanavillil Rajagopalan. I am also a collaborating professor in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics (PIPGLA) at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
Since my doctoral studies, I have maintained a longstanding collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. I was a visiting doctoral researcher there in 2007–2008 and a postdoctoral researcher in 2015–2016, in addition to undertaking several shorter research visits, working with Charles L. Briggs.
I currently serve as Associate Editor of the Journal of Sociolinguistics. I previously served as Co-Editor of Trabalhos em Linguistica Aplicada, and Associate Editor of Pragmatics, the journal of the International Pragmatics Association, and DELTA – Documentação de Estudos em Linguística Teórica e Aplicada, Brazil’s leading linguistics journal.

Selected publications

Books

Silva, D. N., & Lee, J. W. (2024). Language as hope. Cambridge University Press.

Silva, D. N., & Mey, J. L. (Eds.). (2021). The pragmatics of adaptability. John Benjamins.

Silva, D. N. (2012). Pragmática da violência: O Nordeste na mídia brasileira. 7 Letras/Faperj.

Articles

Silva, D. N., & Borba, R. (2024). Sociolinguistics of hope: Language between the no-more and the not-yet. Language in Society, 53, 775–790.

Silva, D. N., & Lopes, A. C. (2023). The seeds of Marielle Franco: Afrodiasporic agency at the online-offline nexus. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1–14.

Silva, D. N. (2022). The politics of enregisterment amid the crossfire in Rio de Janeiro. Signs and Society, 10, 239–264.

Silva, D. N. (2022). Transidiomatic favela: Language resources and embodied resistance in Brazilian and South African peripheries. Applied Linguistics Review.

Silva, D. N., & Lee, J. W. (2020). “Marielle, presente”: Metaleptic temporality and the enregisterment of hope in Rio de Janeiro. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 25, 179–197.

Book chapters

Silva, D. N. (2025). Morality at the abyss: Grassroots activism, counter-securitization and moral authority in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. In M. Haugh & R. Márquez-Reiter (Eds.), Morality in discourse (pp. 161–188). Oxford University Press.

Silva, D. N. (2025). Living at the limit: Sociotechnical affordances and unlearning colonial gender and sexuality. In M. M. de Oliveira & L. Conti (Eds.), Explorations in digital interculturality (pp. 167–194). transcript Verlag.

Rampton, B., Silva, D. N., & Charalambous, C. (2025). Sociolinguistics and securitization as another mode of governance. In Insecurities in language policy and planning (pp. 88–115). Channel View Publications.

Lopes, A. C., & Silva, D. N. (2024). Youth cultures as everyday utopias: The pragmatics of survival and hope in the peripheries of Rio de Janeiro. In B. A. Svendsen & R. Jonsson (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and youth culture (pp. 95–107). Routledge.