Brief history of general languages and language policies in colonial Brazil

Brazil is a multilingual and multicultural country and was so even before the Europeans arrived in the territory. Over the centuries, contact and conflict between European and African languages with indigenous languages have influenced the variety of Portuguese spoken in the country since the 16th c...

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Published inBucharest working papers in linguistics Vol. XXIII; no. 1; pp. 79 - 93
Main Authors Figueira-Cardoso, Samuel, da Silva Borges, Alexandre
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bucharest University Press 2021
Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Subjects
Historical Linguistics
Language studies
Philology
Politics
Social history
Sociolinguistics
language policy
general languages
Amazon region
multilingualism
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Summary:Brazil is a multilingual and multicultural country and was so even before the Europeans arrived in the territory. Over the centuries, contact and conflict between European and African languages with indigenous languages have influenced the variety of Portuguese spoken in the country since the 16th century. In this paper, we present an overview of Brazil’s languages, referring to the so-called general languages and the language policies in favor of the Portuguese language in the period. To this end, we resort to the contributions of scholars who investigate the use of language in society or “social history of language” (Burke 2002, Freire 2003); some concepts derived from the field of language policy; notions of heritage and indigenous culture. It is shown that the policies of colonization were harmful to linguistic diversity, as in the case of the Nheengatu language spoken until today in the North of the country, due to the continuous resistance of the speakers of the language.
ISSN:2069-9239
2069-9239