GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL:
MONOLINGUALISM AND LINGUISTIC PREJUDICE
(Received 12 May 2003; accepted in revised form 30 November 2003)
ABSTRACT. The purpose of this article is to analyse the linguistic situation in Brazil
and to discuss the relationship between Portuguese and the 200 other languages, about
170 indigenous, spoken in the country. It focuses on three points: the historical process of
language unification, recent official language policy initiatives, and linguistic prejudice. I
examine two manifestations of linguistic prejudice, one against external elements and the
other against supposedly inferior internal elements, pointing out to a common origin: the
myth that the Portuguese language in Brazil is characterised by an astonishing unity.
KEY WORDS: Brazil, Brazilian Portuguese, language policy in Brazil, language unification, linguistic ideology, linguistic prejudice, monolingualism
I S T HERE R EALLY A L INGUISTIC Q UESTION C ONCERNING B RAZIL ?
Brazil is an astonishing country in several ways. It is the only Portuguesespeaking country in America and is surrounded by Spanish-speaking
countries. The fifth largest country in the world, with a population of
175 million inhabitants, Brazil is and was almost always viewed, both by
foreign observers but also by its own population, as an enormous, linguistically homogeneous giant. Generally, Brazilians assume that everybody in
Brazil speaks a unique variety of the Portuguese language. According
to this language perception, Brazil is a country without any linguistic
problems.
This language perception by Brazilians can be considered correct only
in the sense that almost everyone can communicate through Portuguese
everywhere within the Brazilian territory. And it is also correct if we
compare Brazil to countries where there is official bilingualism or multilingualism and two or more languages are considered official languages of
the nation and where a relevant part of the population is made of active
speakers of more than one language. Indeed, in Brazil, almost the total
population is constituted of monolingual Portuguese speakers, and the vast
majority of them will never learn a second language.
But this perception of the Brazilian linguistic world can be also
considered wrong if we recall that Portuguese is not in fact the only
Language Policy 3: 3–23, 2004.
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
4
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
language of Brazil. Although it is true that the vast majority of Brazilians
are monolingual, it is not true that Brazil as a whole is a monolingual
country. Following a recent estimate, there are about 200 different
languages that are spoken within the Brazilian territory, of which approximately 170 are indigenous languages, while the others are mainly of
European or Asian origin. Therefore, Brazil is a multilingual nation, like
94% of the countries in the world (Oliveira, 2002: 83–84).
Certainly, these other languages are spoken by marginalised minorities
without a significant economic power, that is by indigenous groups and
immigrants. Moreover, they have never been recognised as legitimate or
even as existing by the media. It is also true that the major TV channels
always consider the viewpoint of the majority in their programming. In this
respect, the populations of non-Portuguese speakers in Brazil are ‘statistically non-significant’ for them. Their choice is not only economic, but also
ideological. The media (including TV, radio and newspapers) have always
embraced the idea of Brazil being a linguistically homogeneous giant.
Searching for the reasons for the “invisibility” of the real Brazilian
linguistic scenario, Oliveira (2002: 83) points to three possibilities: ignorance of the truth, overlooking the truth as a result of a political policy
that intentionally projects a convenient idea of a monolingual country, or
simply pure linguistic prejudice.1
For several levels, all these reasons stand together. The acceptance
without discussion of the fact that Portuguese is Brazil’s unique language,
felt as a natural phenomenon, has been in the past and is still now
fundamental to obtaining nation wide consensus to the repressive policies
towards the languages of Brazilian minorities (Oliveira, 2002: 83).
Analysing the Brazilian linguistic scenario from another point of view,
the three reasons pointed out by Oliveira (2002) can also be correlated
to the invisibility of the Portuguese varieties spoken in Brazil. The widespread belief that the language spoken in Brazil is highly homogeneous is
due probably to a twofold reason: firstly because there are no apparent
problems of mutual intelligibility in everyday communication between
speakers of different varieties of Brazilian Portuguese, when compared
with what happens to different varieties of other languages, like Italian,
Chinese and English; secondly, and more probable, because the intelligibility is not jeopardised by phonological, morphological and syntactic
1 From the perspective of their results, the first two possibilities pointed by Oliveira
can be considered one and the same; however, they are different in intentionality: in the
first one, the ignorance of the truth is non-intentional; in the second one, it is a result of a
political project.
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
5
variations. This fact gives the false impression that the language is totally
homogeneous.
Again, the image that Brazilians have of their own language is not in
complete correspondence to reality. Historically, Brazilian Portuguese is
a relatively recent variety of Portuguese. Because of this, there has not
been enough time for the emergence of distinct dialects due to geographic
or social isolation. In addition to this historical linguistic fact, the sociolinguistic effect of TV Globo (the most important national TV network),
beaming its signal all over the national territory and making the country
a perfect ‘global village’, has enormous importance into setting a prestigious variety of the language as a standard for everyone in the country.2
Even with that powerful influence upon the life of the population, it
would surprise a linguist if a huge country like Brazil did not show any
significant linguistic variation, considering the evidently striking social
and economical differences.
Although there is no clear definition of what would be the standard
Brazilian Portuguese, individuals tend to identify it with the variety
adopted by important TV news programmes, especially Jornal Nacional,
the most important TV news programme on TV Globo. In this programme,
the hosts speak a pasteurised linguistic variety, made up of ‘neutral’
features from the two most important urban varieties: from Rio de Janeiro
and São Paulo. The final result is a mixture of features that make a good
impression upon educated people, with a clear effort to suppress any
characteristic that would identify with only one of those varieties. In other
words, the standard Brazilian Portuguese promoted by the TV news is not
a natural variety of the language. On the contrary, it is an artificial variety
2 Fischer (2001: 174) notes that, after the Second World War, the intrusion of television
increased dialect levelling; because of that, “contamination and superimposition have since
been documented among large populations of viewers”. In his opinion, “at this moment,
television is perhaps the single greatest cause of universal dialect levelling” – referring to
the use of standard American English, that is increasing at a rapid rate in those Englishspeaking countries that broadcast American programmes without ‘dubbing’. But Fischer
(2001: 182) also notes that “in a contrasting process, the recent ‘modernization’ of the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has essentially eliminated what had come to
be called ‘BBC English’, an easily recognizable received pronunciation of the English
language that had long been held in high regard. Now, older listeners, be they in Britain
or New Zealand, register alarm at hearing in BBC broadcasts what they register as ‘lowerclass pronunciation’; they feel this not only ‘lower standards’ but also demonstrates ‘a
beastly lack of good taste’. However, such protestations are meaningless in the larger saga
of living languages. ‘Superior’ dialects are only a chimera, as special dialects themselves
very soon mutate and/or lose what made them special.”
6
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
and a convenient way to manipulate the language problems in a huge and
heterogeneous country like Brazil.3
When a ‘non-Globo variety’ is needed, it is never the voice of the
‘official’ news. Non-stigmatised regional varieties are accepted only as
a ‘secondary’ source of information. And the stigmatised social varieties
only appear in this context as the voice of very poor people, when they
are presented as victims of violence or natural disasters, or as the voice of
criminals.
It is interesting to notice that the non-news TV programmes, mainly
the soap-operas (novelas), usually show some characters who speak with
a caricatured variety, by emphasising regional or social accents to the
maximum, instead of using an artist that is a native user of those regional
or social accents. For this kind of programme, it seems unthinkable to
give higher status on TV to regional or social varieties of less importance,
because this would be an ‘official’ recognition that those varieties actually
exist in the society. This is good evidence that the social stereotypes in
relation to language in Brazil are carefully built and strongly reinforced
by the media, principally by the TV networks. It also reveals a general
and somehow official disbelief in the heterogeneity of the language in the
country.
In the same way that the common sense view never sees that other
languages are spoken in addition to Portuguese in Brazil, the varieties of
the vast majority of the population are never considered as belonging to
Brazilian Portuguese. Since people are not deaf to linguistic variation and
are capable of realising that the variety they speak is different from the
Portuguese spoken on television, the vast majority of the Brazilian people
develop a very strong complex of linguistic incompetence: they believe
they do not speak Portuguese, but an incorrect form that does not deserve
the name of Portuguese.
In spite of the apparently harmonious linguistic scenario (or because
of that), the linguistic problem is never posed as a question in the
national agenda. When it is, it is considered a shortcoming of the educational system. Only official and traditional discourses about language
problems seem to be acceptable in Brazilian society, and this means
ignoring the dangerous consequences of this idealisation of language
problems.
The most striking truth about linguistic variation is the fact that even
highly educated people, especially the ones that appear in the media, ignore
the scientific discourse about language. Consequently, ordinary people do
3 Moreover, TV Globo maintains in its staff speech specialists to train the readers of the
news to pronounce the ‘global’ variety of Brazilian Portuguese.
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
7
not have access to a critical view about the traditional mythical misunderstandings about language. According to Faraco (2002: 39), in terms of
thinking about language, we still live in a pre-scientific dogmatic and
obscurantist age.4
The problems about language go beyond the identification of regional
and social varieties as linguistic problems. It is an important political
problem that deeply affects several social situations. Moreover, it is not a
simple shortcoming of the educational system. In the end, we come across
ignorance and prejudice, present in the everyday life of the people and
even in educational strategies. It is time to start a more scientific discussion
involving the multiple aspects of language in society. It is time to start a
debate between the multiple discourses about language in Brazil (Faraco,
2002: 39).
L ANGUAGE U NIFICATION
When we look at the Brazilian linguistic past (a very recent one of 500
years, in terms of surviving documents – all of the indigenous languages
spoken in Brazil only recently began to be written), it is possible to see that
Brazil was, much more than today, a multilingual territory. According to
Rodrigues (1998: 5), there were more than one thousand native indigenous
spoken languages when Cabral arrived in Brazil in the year 1500. But,
by 2000, only 170 remained (15% of the total amount), and, even so,
most of them are already dying, being spoken by very small populations and with almost no chance of surviving because of the advance of
Portuguese.
Until the middle of the 18th century, the Portuguese language was
spoken only in the coastal areas. In São Paulo and in the territorial area
of expansion resulting from the bandeirantes’ action (the bandeirantes
were hunters of native slaves and gold and precious stone prospectors),
the spoken language was the língua geral (i.e., lingua franca or ‘general’
language), an indigenous language, with Tupi origins. This was the
language spoken by the Jesuits and described by José de Anchieta
(1595). In the Northeast there were indigenous tribal languages that
survived extinction, African languages that resisted slavery, in addition to
Portuguese and Creole varieties derived from Portuguese (for example,
Papiamento, a Portuguese based Creole, taken to Curaçao and Aruba
with the slaves that belonged to the Dutch, after they were expelled from
4 Discussing this problem in the United States, Baugh (1999: 6) asks: “Should some
citizens be discriminated against because of our collective linguistic ignorance?”
8
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
Recife by the Portuguese). In the north, other indigenous languages were
spoken and another type of lingua franca, the Amazonian língua geral, or
Nheengatu, also originated from an indigenous language, spread over the
region (Zilles, 2002: 151–152).5
In Brazil, since colonial times, every initiative of language policy was
based on repression (Bagno, 2002b: 54). The most important initiative
from those times was the Marquês de Pombal’s ‘Diretório dos índios’
(‘Directory of the Indians’), published in 1757. It established Portuguese as
the one and only language of Brazil, prohibiting the use and teaching of any
other language, especially the língua geral. The imposition of Portuguese
as the obligatory language was made at a time when that language was
practically the exclusive domain of white people, who were responsible
for administration and territorial exploration, and who constituted a very
small sector of the population. To impose Portuguese on African and native
slaves without guaranteeing the means for its effective learning (if slaves
were not even considered persons, then how could they have rights to a
formal education?) was, in those days, the first step in the direction of using
Portuguese as an instrument of social exclusion. It takes only a short step
from this repressive situation to the linguistic prejudice that stigmatises the
popular use of speech today.
The disappearance of Nheengatu was gradual. It was accelerated by
the death of 40,000 speakers of this language, native and Africans, in
the revolution called Cabanagem, from 1834 to 1841, and completed with
the arrival of between 300,000 to 500,000 Nordestinos (North-Easterners),
monolingual Portuguese speakers, in the Amazonian region. It happened
between 1870 (when the ciclo da borracha – rubber economy – began)
and 1918 (end of the First World War) (Oliveira, 2002: 86). Although
the replacement of Nheengatu by Portuguese continues, it still survives
in the region of Manaus and Alto Rio Negro, in an area of approximately
300,000 km2 . There, Nheengatu is the language of day to day communication among the resident populations and it is the language of trade (Bessa
Freire, 1983: 73 – apud; Oliveira, 2002: 86).6 A proof of its survival in
5 Concerning South-American lı́nguas gerais and structural changes common to all of
them, see Rodrigues (n.d.).
6 On November 22, 2002, three indigenous languages (Nheengatu, Tukano and Baniwa)
were declared official languages in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, state of Amazonas, in
addition to Portuguese. It was the first time in the history of Brazil that an indigenous
language obtained official status by law (Gilvan Müller de Oliveira, http://groups.yahoo.
com/group/CVL and http://www.ipol.org.br, accessed on 14 February 2003).
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
9
the area is the existence of election propaganda, written in Nheengatu (see
Table 1).7
Today, in Brazil, there are about 345,000 indigenous people, distributed
in 215 communities, that represent about only 0.2% of the population.
These data refer only to those individuals who live in aldeias (Indian
villages), but it is possible to estimate that, besides these, there are between
100,000 and 190,000 Indians living outside the reservas indígenas (Indian
reservations), including urban areas.8 Even today, many Indians speak only
their own language, not knowing Portuguese. Others speak Portuguese as
their second language. And there are others who speak only Portuguese.
The linguist Aryon Dall’Igna Rodrigues (1985, 1999) established a
genealogic classification for Brazilian Indigenous languages that is until
today the most respected in the scientific community. He grouped those
languages in families, considered as belonging to three different linguistic
branches: Tupi, Macro-Jê and Aruak. There are families, however, that
could not be identified as related to any of the three major branches: Karib,
Pano, Maku, Yanoama, Mura, Tukano, Katukina, Txapakura, Nambikwara
and Guaikuru. Besides these, there are languages that can be subdivided in
different dialects: for example, the language spoken by the groups Krikati,
Ramkokametrá (Canela), Apinayé, Krahó, Gavião (Pará), Pükobyê and
Apaniekrá (Canela) are dialects of the Timbira language.
When we observe the distribution of indigenous populations in Brazil
today, it is possible to see traces of the historical movement of political and
economic expansion. The majority of indigenous societies that preserved
their languages live today in the northern, central and southern regions
of Brazil. In the other regions, they were pushed back as urbanisation
advanced.
In opposition to the trend of replacing Indian languages with
Portuguese, it is possible to see today a revitalisation process whereby the
oral language is reinforced with written language in a few Xingu villages,
that began with the adoption of a bilingual literacy methodology in schools
located inside the aldeias (cf. Fargetti, 2002, on Juruna; Monte, 1996, on
Kaxinawá). In fact, bilingual education is seen today as the only way of
preserving native languages in Brazil, especially by indigenous teachers
7 Example collected and presented by Gilvan Müller de Oliveira (2002: 86). The
translation to Portuguese is also his. The English version is mine. (Words originally in
Portuguese remain untouched in both Portuguese and English versions.)
8 Information available on Funai’s (Fundação Nacional do Índio – The National
Indian Foundation) homepage, http://www.funai.gov.br/indios/conteudo.htm (accessed on
1 February 2003).
He is a good person. He is our
friend (relative).
Acting as Deputado Estadual,
Teacher Aloysio Nogueira will be
our brave warrior.
Ele é gente boa. Ele é nosso
amigo (parente).
Como deputado estadual,
o professor Aloysio Nogueira vai
ser o nosso valente guerreiro.
Aé mira katu, ti mira puxi.
Aé yané anama.
M buessara Aloysio Nogueira ussu
Professor Auxiliomar Silva
Ugarte.
Teacher Auxiliomar Silva Ugarte.
I embrace you, my relatives.
Eu vos abraço, meus parentes.
Ixé ayumana penhé, sé anamaitá.
M buessara Auxiliomar Silva Ugarte
suı́.
He will be the voice of Alto Rio
Negro’s people in the Assembléia
Legislativa.
Teacher Aloysio Nogueira is
candidato
to Deputado Estadual
Ele vai ser a voz dos povos do
Alto Rio Negro na Assembléia
Legislativa.
Aé ussu Alto Rio Negro miraitá
nheenga kuri Assembléia
Legislativa upé.
yané maramunhangara kirimbawa
kuri.
Deputado estadual yawé,
candidato
Deputado Estadual arã
O Professor Aloysio Nogueira é
candidato
a Deputado Estadual.
M buessara Aloysio Nogueira
My brothers:
Meus irmãos:
Sé muitá
To the people of Alto Rio Negro
Aos povos do alto Rio Negro
Alto Rio Negro miraitá arã
Election propaganda in Nheengatu with Portuguese and English translations.
TABLE 1
10
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
11
(cf. Kahn, 1994; Monte, 1996; Midlin, 1997; Aiwá, 1997).9 But we must
be cautious about the concept and introduction of bilingual education in
this context. In Grupioni’s (1997: 184) opinion, all educational attempts
in the past aimed to “integrate” indigenous people, but in the sense of “to
transform them into something different from what they were”. However,
Grupioni also recognises that only a “specific, differentiated, intercultural
and bilingual” education can become an “instrument of affirmation of
different identities”, instead of being an “instrument of imposition and
assimilation”.10
In spite of the dominance of língua geral at the beginning of the
colonisation, the influence of indigenous languages on the structure of
current Brazilian Portuguese is almost nonexistent. Their ancestral presence in the geographic area of Brazil can only be traced in the lexicon, in
which their legacy is restricted to names, especially of places, animals and
food.
From the beginning of the colonial period, the Portuguese transported
to Brazil an enormous number of African slaves. As competent slave
traders, the Portuguese always knew that they had to separate families
and members of the same tribe into different groups, in order to avoid
the formation of bonds of friendship and movements of insurrection.
In the same way, they used to separate speakers of the same language
into different groups. Maybe because of the success of the strategies
adopted by the Portuguese, African languages never stabilised or became
spoken in Brazil, despite the number of African descendants. Historically,
some of those languages were temporarily spoken in a few Quilombos,
communities of fugitive slaves. The influence of African languages
on Brazilian Portuguese is even less significant than the influence of
indigenous languages. Only words referring to food, religious practices,
music and parts of the body remain in the lexicon. There is today in Brazil
a movement to recover a few terms and traditions related to religions of
African origin. And there are also movements of racial affirmation, with
practically no ramifications for language.
In the 18th century, Portuguese was already the dominant language
in the most developed cities, where several important literary texts were
9 Cavalcanti (1996) studies the interaction between teacher educators and indigenous
teachers in a Guarani community in the South of Brazil. She describes the conflicts originated by this situation of interaction, and the “cross-cultural” misunderstandings to take
account of the divergent interest of both groups and the wider political context of the
oppression of indigenous people in Brazil.
10 Hornberger (1998: 451) reviews several situations concerning other languages (Maori,
Hebrew and Welsh, for example) in which bilingual schools were crucial instruments for
language revitalisation.
12
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
produced. Portuguese was the dominant language in Gregório de Matos’
Bahia (18th century). Portuguese was also the language of the inconfidentes from Minas Gerais (18th century), among which was the poet
Tomás Antônio Gonzaga. Of course, these important poets were educated
European Portuguese speakers.
From 1820, with the beginning of the official processes (e.g. Lei do
Ventre Livre11 and Lei do Sexagenário12 ) which culminated in the abolition of slavery in 1888, and with the recognition that, in certain ways, to
pay independent workers was cheaper and more productive than to maintain slaves, large groups of immigrants began to arrive in Brazil, aiming to
substitute slave labour in agriculture.
Brazil has never stopped receiving immigrants since then. Of course,
there were periods of increment in the number of immigrants (especially
after the two world wars) and periods of decrease in this number (mainly
in recent years, because of the economic crisis). Today, there are in Brazil
descendants of immigrants from virtually everywhere in the world. There
are large groups of Italians, Germans, Japanese,13 Spanish, Lebanese, and,
more recently, Chinese and Korean. In Southeast region, they mixed with
the local population and tended to abandon their native language in at most
three generations.
In the South, especially in the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande
do Sul (but even in some cities of São Paulo, in the Southeast), the structure
of small agricultural properties and homogeneous colonisation provided
suitable conditions for the maintenance of German and Italian languages
in some areas. In an estimated national population of 50 million inhabitants, 644,458 (Brazilian citizens, born in Brazil in the majority) used to
speak German at home, and 458,054, Italian (Oliveira, 2002: 88). German
and Italian immigrants and their descendants eventually became victims
of the policy of linguistic unification. They came under violent linguistic
and cultural repression during Getúlio Vargas’ Estado Novo (1937–1945),
11 Lei do Ventre Livre (‘Law of the free womb’), 1871: it stated that the newborn
children of slaves would be free from that date.
12 Lei do Sexagenário (‘Law of the Sixties’), 1885: it stated that slaves over 65 years old
would be freed.
13 São Paulo is considered the largest Japanese city outside Japan. In the Japanese area of
the city, there are newspapers published in Japanese and bilingual schools. It is curious to
notice that, in present days, because of the economic crisis, Brazilian Japanese descendants
are re-crossing the oceans in the contrary direction, emigrating “back” to Japan. They are
known by the name dekasseguis. Their adaptation in the country is very difficult, because,
besides the great differences in labour systems, the majority do not speak the Japanese
language anymore and those who still know the language are stigmatised, because their
variety is considered impolite, uneducated and archaic.
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
13
because of the juridical concept of crime idiomático (= idiomatic crime).
From 1941 to 1945, the government took over control and ownership of the
schools of German and Italian communities. The government also closed
down the presses that published newspapers in German or Italian and
persecuted, imprisoned and tortured several individuals, purely because
they had spoken their maternal languages in public or in private (Oliveira,
2002: 87–88).
With Independence and (lately) with the Republic, linguistic unification processes in favour of Portuguese have been continuously reinforced,
as, officially, Portuguese was always considered the unique language of
Brazil. With economic development after the Second World War, means
of communication (newspapers, radio and television) began to reach every
part of the Brazilian territory and reinforce the dominance of Portuguese,
even in boundary regions. As has been said previously, today, Brazil is
often viewed as a gigantic ‘aldeia global’ (global village), inasmuch as
the influence of TV Globo, the most powerful and popular Brazilian TV
network in the formation of general opinion is striking, and also in the
creation and maintenance of a language standard.
R ECENT O FFICIAL I NITIATIVES OF L ANGUAGE P OLICY
Topics related to linguistic policy are always approached in Brazil today by
the most important newspapers and magazines as mere “issues of cultural
interest” (Schmitz, 2002: 88), maybe because the two most recent initiatives in this respect are less “violent” than earlier policies of repression
(less violent in the sense that no one is supposed to be killed because of
their language). But they are still highly questionable.
The first one concerns the Acordo Ortográfico (Orthographic Accord)
among Portuguese-speaking countries. In practice, it involves an agreement between Portugal and Brazil, because the African countries tend to
adopt the European Portuguese spelling. First of all, it is necessary to say
that an accord of this nature, referring to the way by which Portuguese will
be spelled on both sides of the Atlantic, does not involve a linguistic question in a strict sense, since changes in orthographic system do not affect
the structure of the language. In this respect, even if Brazil and Portugal
could reach a common understanding and consequent agreement about this
matter (as has been attempted since the 1980s), differences concerning the
language spoken in these two countries would not be reduced. In fact, the
problem is not a question of linguistic science, but of diplomacy and of
juridical order, since orthography (spelling) is an object of law, in both
countries, and, being so, it is official only in its country of origin. Since
14
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
differences in the orthography adopted in Portugal and Brazil are very
small, it would be more practical to solve this quarrel at a legal level, giving
official status to both spelling systems in both countries (concerning the
very few words in which traditionally there are differences in spelling).14
The most recent initiative of language policy in Brazil is the Projeto
de Lei Número 1676 de 1999 (Projected Law #1676/1999), proposed by
Deputado Aldo Rebelo (Partido Comunista do Brasil – São Paulo), that
has not yet been approved, since it is still being discussed in the Câmara
dos Deputados (Chamber of the Deputies) and in the Senado (Senate). It
is known by the name Lei dos Estrangeirismos, because it proposes the
prohibition of the use of foreign words in Brazil, including legal sanctions
with a fine to those who use “abusive” (sic!) foreign words (that is, words
that have equivalents in Portuguese). According to Deputado Rebelo,
Portuguese needs to be “defended” from the invasion of foreign words
(mainly from English origin) and “promoted” in the national territory.15
Apparently aiming to protect humble people that do not know how to
speak English against “harmful North-American intruder words”, Rebelo’s
projected law imposes the use of Portuguese in public spaces, including
work places, on any foreigner who has been living in Brazil for more than
one year (Zilles, 2002: 146–147). Although the projected law alludes to
regional peculiarities of speech and writing and recognises that languages
change with time, it is in fact based on a homogeneous and aesthetic
conception of language, because the language is considered mainly in its
unity. This supposed possibility of equal communication at all levels is
nothing more than a myth, an idealisation (Fiorin, 2002: 113).
If desire is the force that moves language users towards borrowing
words from foreign languages (many times, unneeded ones), then fear is
probably the feeling that generates the aversion to loans - fear of invasion
that threatens control, that threatens the supposed language purity and the
monolithic nationality, and lastly, fear of plurality and diversity (Garcez &
14 This is not the first attempt to achieve an Accord over Orthography between Brazil
and Portugal. Discussions over this subject began in the end of the XIXth century. Spelling
reforms were made independently by the two countries and there were unsuccessful efforts
towards unification in the 1940s (cf. Cagliari, 1992, 1996). See also Garcez (1995), who
shows that, while most of the debate revolves around issues of linguistic efficiency, the
Accord and its proponents are primarily concerned with political and diplomatic efficiency.
15 This kind of law (i.e. defending the language of the nation against borrowings from
foreign languages) is neither a novelty nor a Brazilian creation. Similar laws were approved
in France (Toubon law, 1994 – cf. Judge, 2002), Iceland (Vikør, 2002) and Italy (during the
fascist period – cf. Ruzza, 2002), for example. However, purist manifestations against loans
are not always codified into law, although they persist as a prescriptivist force [concerning
German, see Barbour (2002); Mar-Molinero (2002) analyses this problem in Spain].
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
15
Zilles, 2002: 34). An initiative based on fear does not match with a people
who have always been proud to be a result of a racial mixture, in official
and popular speeches.
Despite its supposed nationalistic appeal that seduced politicians and
journalists, Aldo Rebelo’s proposal was severely criticised by sectors of
the media and mainly by Brazilian linguists (see the book edited by Faraco,
2002). Because of this reaction, the Rebelo bill has been set aside by
Brazil’s Senate. Instead, a substitutive text was presented by Senator Amir
Lando. It is a revised version that was prepared with the contribution
of both Brazilian Association of Linguistics (ABRALIN) and Brazilian
Association of Applied Linguistics (ALAB).
The new version of the law was proposed in May 28th 2003. Although
it continues to forbid the use of foreign words in official documents, in the
media, in commercial advertisements and posters, and creates commissions to translate the “needed” foreign technical terms, in several ways it
is a declaration of “good intentions”. Among various measures, it proposes
the creation of means for the renovation of Portuguese teaching in Brazil
as well as the formation of Portuguese teachers; it also wills to strengthen
relations between Brazil and the community of Portuguese-speaking
countries.
However, the anti-foreign-words project still continues to define the
language of the nation as one which must be protected against the foreign
menace, and doing so, it still legitimises the definition of the national
language as restricted to the language of power, to the socially controllable
written pattern, whose limits are defined by an elite. In this context, when
an external element is configured as a common menace, linguistic differences that mark internal divisions of society are overshadowed (Garcez &
Zilles, 2002: 27). Differences between Brazilians who speak differently
and who mark their different identity precisely in the way they speak are
simply erased.
It is interesting to observe that individuals that criticise the
“scandalous” presence of foreign words in our “pure” Portuguese are the
same that condemn popular, regional and informal Portuguese (Schmitz,
2002: 101). It is even more interesting to observe that these two manifestations of linguistic prejudice (against the external element and against
the supposed inferior internal element) have a common origin: the myth
that Portuguese language in Brazil is characterised by an amazing unity
(Bagno, 2002a: 15) and the association between State (the Nation) and
Portuguese as its official language (Silva & Moura, 2002: 11). On the one
hand, the denial of multilingualism and, on the other hand, the exclusion
of speech and ways of speaking that are not in strict correspondence with
16
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
this idealised Portuguese are direct and concrete results of a social posture
plenty of linguistic prejudice.
L INGUISTIC P REJUDICE
When a child begins to speak, he/she does not learn just one language:
he/she learns the specific variety of the language spoken by his/her parents.
The adoption of a specific linguistic variety has the function of marking the
inclusion of an individual into the social group to which he belongs and of
giving identity to the members of this specific group. As native speakers of
one language, we learn to distinguish variation. We may learn to speak just
one variety, but we are hearers of all varieties of the language (Cagliari,
1989). Every speaker is necessarily a “polyglot” in his own language.
To know Portuguese, in this sense, is not only to know rules that exist
exclusively in the language learned from school.
Native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese know how to distinguish the
Paulista (São Paulo) variety from the Carioca (Rio de Janeiro) variety, the
Gaúcha (Rio Grande do Sul) variety from those spoken in the northeast
and north, without mentioning all other types of varieties of Portuguese
in Brazil. A native speaker also knows differences in linguistic uses: for
example, that some expressions belong to the speech of younger persons
and that particular expressions can only be used in informal situations, etc.
To know one language is also to know its varieties. Varieties are not ugly
or beautiful, right or wrong, good or bad, elegant or inelegant; they are
simply different (Fiorin, 2002: 114).
Modern linguists recognise languages as a collection of regional,
social, situational and temporal variants. Modern sociolinguistics analyses
language variants in accordance with a particular situation of interaction. Any language used in any society cannot be prescribed by language
guardians; instead it will always be the result of a historical process:
contacts with populations of other countries, cultural experiences, political trajectory, etc. Facing these facts, since its beginning, linguists labeled
the prescriptivist posture as pre-scientific, hoping that social and linguistic
prejudices generated by prescriptivism could naturally disappear and be
beaten by the development of linguistic research and more scientifically
based educational systems (Silva & Moura, 2002: 9–10). However, the
scenario did not change in Brazil.16 Recently, the debate about linguistic
prejudice has returned to provoke discussions among Brazilian linguists,
16 Considering the persistence of manifestations of linguistic prejudice in society, the
scenario did not change all over the world – even in the most powerful and educated
countries, as in the United States, for example. There are important studies focusing on
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
17
because it is impossible not to notice that prejudice is far from being
defeated in the country. Two reasons have been pointed out: firstly, the
perception that manifestations of linguistic prejudice persisted in our
society, including official initiatives (for example, Deputado Aldo Rebelo’s
proposal), but especially in the media (for example, the enormous success
of new media-friendly purist grammarians); secondly, the recognition of
the fact that the symbolic power of language can lead to stronger interactions between language uses and social prejudice that could not be
imagined by descriptivist language researchers (Silva & Moura, 2002: 10).
Bagno (2002a: 15) believes that the idea that Brazilian Portuguese is
characterised by an amazing unity is the most dangerous and serious of all
the myths that compose the mosaic of linguistic prejudice in Brazil. This
myth is harmful to education because, not recognising the true diversity
of the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil, the education system tries
to impose its linguistic pattern as if it were in fact the common language
to all 175 million Brazilians, independent of their age, geographic origin,
socioeconomic situation and educational level (Bagno, 2002a: 15). The
linguistic prejudice in Brazil manifests itself with a stronger ferocity in
relation to the speech of the poorer sector of the population, independently
of geographic region. The serious differences in social status explain the
existence of a true linguistic abyss between speakers of non-standard varieties (the vast majority of our population) and speakers of a (supposed)
standard variety in Brazil (Bagno, 2002a: 15).
The most damaging point about the linguistic prejudice against the varieties of Brazilian Portuguese spoken in the poorer sectors of the population is the correlation linking poverty to cognitive and mental deficits.
From this viewpoint, those who do not “speak correctly”, do not “think
properly”.17 And, because judgements on language extend to those who
non-standard English in that country that show how linguistic prejudice emerges in several
dimensions. Lippi-Green (1997), for example, focuses on regional and social variation,
looking at how the media works to promote linguistic stereotyping; she also examines how
employers discriminate on the basis of language use and reveals how the judicial system
uses language to protect the status quo. Baugh (1999: 6) discusses the relevance of AfricanAmerican Vernacular English (AAVE) to education and social policies, showing that it is
“far from being an impoverished dialect”, despite it continues to stigmatise speakers as
“uneducated ” members of the society. Smitherman (2000) comments on the late 1990s
Ebonics controversy, linking it to past issues about language, culture and education of
people of African descent in the United States. Rickford (1999) covers three central areas
correlated to AAVE/Ebonics studies: phonological and grammatical features of AAVE;
evolution of AAVE; and educational implications.
17 Baugh (1999) discusses this correlation and its damaging consequences in the United
States, concerning AAVE. He examines the assumption of standard English speakers that
non-standard English speakers are ignorant. In this sense, there is a common stereotype
18
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
speak it, speakers of non-standard varieties are automatically considered
non-capable workers and, consequently, non-capable individuals.
In Brazil, this is the main reason that explains why linguistic prejudice
against the speech of popular classes is so widespread. The separation of
the rationality of the educated class, on one side, from the pre-rational
spontaneity of the poorer, on the other, is a well-established dichotomy
in the culture. Even those who consider popular language to be creative
and spontaneous, although illogical, like for example the ex-President
Sarney, fall into another kind of prejudice, disguised in an understanding
appreciation of specific values of popular language and culture (Moura,
2002: 76–77). Since all dialects18 of the language are equally efficient,
whether they are prestigious or not, there is no scientific reason against the
adoption of non-standard varieties of Portuguese by the education system.
However, choosing the linguistic variety of the community as the language
for education purposes, particularly in the case of non-prestigious stigmatised varieties, results in the confinement of the students to their own world,
condemning them endlessly to poverty, preventing them from enlarging
their horizons and from promoting themselves socially – education is still
a powerful instrument of social promotion. In this sense, the education
system is obliged to live in an eternal contradiction: the variety spoken
by the students should not be discriminated against, because it is also an
instrument of self-positioning and of individual affirmation as a member
of a specific group inside the whole society, but the education system must
promote the use of a standard variety, since the advantages the students will
gain from it are evident. A non-discriminative educational approach to the
dialects spoken by the students must promote their use in adequate situations. In this way, the decision to teach standard Portuguese at Brazilian
schools is not intrinsically discriminatory of the other varieties, if it is
presented and treated as one among many varieties of the language. A good
programme should teach how the non-prestigious varieties are structured
along with the study of the descriptive grammar of a standard variety.
that non-standard speakers could speak “properly” if “only they put forth sufficient effort”,
that is responsible for this misconception. It is not difficult to find coincidences here, in
comparison to the Brazilian situation.
18 Recently, some scholars who discussed language prejudice and the contradictory
dilemma of the education system concerning non-standard varieties preferred not to use the
word “dialect”, because of its pejorative appeal to the public view. That is why Smitherman
(2000: 14) prefers to consider AAVE a ‘language’ – and not a ‘dialect’ of American
English.
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
19
C ONCLUSION
Brazilians like to see themselves as a result of a racial mixture and they
are quite proud of this image (in spite of the fact that this idea tends to
hide racial and social prejudices that, in fact, persist in the country). This
image is also a commonplace to Brazilianists, who always like to see Brazil
as a kind of multiracial paradise, a harmonious country that unites several
different races in the same geographic area, without civil war or nationalist
conflicts.19
However, the linguistic reality does not fit the description of racial
harmony, because the country, since colonial times, has constituted a
place of movements of language unification towards Portuguese. In this
scenario, an attitude of harmonious co-existence with diversity was never
considered. Even today, the existence of linguistic diversity in Brazil is
always denied, in official discourses, in the media, and in the common
sense of the population, and in both levels: concerning other languages
and concerning varieties of Brazilian Portuguese.
The majority of the population ignore the linguistic reality of the
country. They do not know that there are several different indigenous
languages: most of the people think that there is only one (and this idea
is reinforced every year by the educational system, in parties celebrating
Dia do Índio – Indian’s Day).
Indeed, the majority of the people believe that Brazilians speak
Portuguese, but an inferior and illegitimate variety, compared to European
Portuguese – the “correct” model for the language.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to present an easy and immediate
solution to the present situation that could terminate linguistic prejudice
definitely and help ordinary Brazilians perceive the linguistic reality of the
country. It is well known that “language policy and language education can
serve as vehicles for promoting the vitality, versatility, and stability of (. . .)
languages” (Hornberger, 1988: 439).
In the case of co-existence of different languages in indigenous
communities and in groups of immigrants, bilingual schools have been
seen as powerful weapons of affirmation and vitalisation of languages of
19 An approach to monolingualism in the U.S. and the question of standard English ideologies that is similar to the one adopted in this paper (concerning Brazilian Portuguese) can
be found in Wiley and Lukes (1996). They compare and contrast two particularly accepted
ideologies in the United States: the monolingualism ideology that denies the importance of
native and immigrant languages; and the standard English ideology, that is used to position
speakers of different varieties of the same language within a social hierarchy. Their article
discusses the connection between assumptions underlying linguistic ideologies and other
social ideologies related to individualism and social mobility through education.
20
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
minority groups. But it is not possible to propose the creation of bilingual
schools, in the case of stigmatised varieties of Portuguese, because we
are not talking about ‘minorities’ in a strict sense, since speakers of nonstandard Brazilian Portuguese are the majority of the population. However,
“the whole notion of language minority has more to do with power than
with numbers” (Hornberger, 1998: 453).
Nonetheless, in both cases, the ideal educational system is the one that
celebrates rather than tolerates the linguistic diversity. Since “the language
policy of the school system is both a result of (. . .) pressures (. . .) and a
source of pressure itself” (Spolsky, 1978: 64), it is possible to turn this
powerful pressure to a positive direction.
Finally, in the future, the keyword to the formulation of a positive
language policy in Brazil seems to be respect: respect towards speakers
of other languages, respect concerning different varieties of Portuguese,
respect to one’s own (legitimate) variety. And this kind of respect-based
language policy is something that Brazil has never seen before.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A previous version of this paper was presented in a session of the Hillary
term Seminar in the Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford.
I would like to thank the audience, who offered interesting comments.
Special thanks to Cristina Martins Fargetti and Gilvan Müller de Oliveira.
I would like also to thank two anonymous reviewers, whose comments
greatly improved this text.
The research that originated this paper was supported by CAPES
(BEX0095/02-8).
R EFERENCES
Aiwá, Geraldo Marques (1997). Escola Apurinã: uma experiência de revitalização da
língua indígena. [Apurinã School: An experience for the revitalisation of the indigenous
language.] In Wilmar D’Angelis & Juracilda Veiga (Eds), Leitura e escrita em escolas
indígenas [Reading and writing in indigenous schools] (pp. 209–212). Campinas: ALB,
Mercado de Letras.
Anchieta, Joseph de (1595). Arte de grammatica da lingua mais usada na costa do Brasil
[Art of grammar of the most used language on the coast of Brazil]. Coimbra, n.p.
Bagno, Marcos (2002a). Preconceito lingüístico – o que é, como se faz [Linguistic
prejudice: What it is and how it does], 16th edition. São Paulo: Loyola.
Bagno, Marcos (2002b). Cassandra, Fênix e outros mitos. [Cassandra, Phoenix and other
myths.] In Carlos Alberto Faraco (Ed), Estrangeirismos – guerras em torno da língua
[Foreign terms – language wars], 2nd edition (pp. 49–83). São Paulo: Parábola.
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
21
Barbour, Stephen (2002). Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg: The total coincidence of nations and speech communities? In Stephen Barbour & Cathie Carmichael
(Eds), Language and nationalism in Europe (pp. 151–167). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Baugh, John (1999). Out of the mouths of slaves: African-American language and
educational malpractice. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
Bessa Freire, José (1983). Da ‘fala boa’ ao português na Amazônia brasileira. [From ‘good
speech’ to Portuguese in Brazilian Amazonia.] Ameríndia, 8 (quoted in Oliveira, 2002).
Cagliari, Luiz Carlos (1989). Alfabetização e Lingüística. [Literacy and Linguistics.] São
Paulo: Scipione.
Cagliari, Luiz Carlos (1992). O acordo de unificação ortográfica. [The Accord of spelling
unification.] Estudos lingüísticos XXI. Anais de seminários do GEL [Linguistc Studies
XXI. Proceedings of GEL Seminars], Vol. I, pp. 518–525. Jaú: Fundação Educacional
Dr Raul Bauab, GEL.
Cagliari, Luiz Carlos (1996). Como não fazer uma reforma ortográfica. O acordo de
unificação das ortografias de Língua Portuguesa. [How not to do a spelling reform. The
Accord of unification of Portuguese orthographies.] Letras, 15(1–2), 81–98 (Campinas:
Instituto de Letras, PUCCAMP).
Cavalcanti, Marilda C. (1996). Collusion, resistance and reflexivity: Indigenous teacher
education in Brazil. Linguistics and Education, 8(2), 175–188.
Faraco, Carlos Alberto (2002). Guerras em torno da língua – questões de política
lingüística. [Language wars – questions of language policy.] In Carlos Alberto Faraco
(Ed), Estrangeirismos – guerras em torno da língua [Foreign terms – language wars],
2nd edition (pp. 37–47). São Paulo: Parábola.
Fargetti, Cristina Martins (2002). Escrita em Língua Juruna: Desafios e Parcerias. [Writing
in Juruna: Challenges and partnership.] In A.S.A.C. Cabral & A.D. Rodrigues (Eds),
Atas do I Encontro Internacional do Grupo de Trabalho sobre Línguas Indígenas da
ANPOLL [Proceedings of the I International Meeting of the ANPOLL’s Indigenous
Languages Workgroup], Tome 2. Belém: Editora Universitária.
Fiorin, José Luiz (2002). Considerações em torno do Projeto de Lei 1676/99. [Considerations concerning the Projected Law 1676/99.] In Carlos Alberto Faraco (Ed), Estrangeirismos – guerras em torno da língua [Foreign terms – language wars], 2nd edition
(pp. 107–125). São Paulo: Parábola.
Fischer, Steven Roger (2001). A history of language. London: Reaktion Books.
Garcez, Pedro M. (1995). The debatable 1990 Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord.
Language Problems and Language Planning, 19(2), 151–178.
Garcez, Pedro M. & Zilles, Ana Maria S. (2002). Estrangeirismos – desejos e ameaças.
[Foreign terms – desires and menaces.] In Carlos Alberto Faraco (Ed), Estrangeirismos
– guerras em torno da língua [Foreign terms – language wars], 2nd edition (pp. 15–36).
São Paulo: Parábola.
Grupioni, Luís Donisete Benzi (1997). De alternativo a oficial: sobre a (im)possibilidade
da educação escolar indígena no Brasil. [From alternative to official: The (im)possibility
of indigenous formal education in Brazil.] In Wilmar D’Angelis & Juracilda Veiga (Eds),
Leitura e escrita em escolas indígenas [Reading and writing in indigenous schools]
(pp. 184–201). Campinas: ALB, Mercado de Letras.
Hornberger, Nancy H. (1998). Language policy, language education, language rights:
Indigenous, immigrant, and international perspectives. Language in Society, 27(4),
439–458.
22
GLADIS MASSINI-CAGLIARI
Judge, Anne (2002). France: ‘One state, one nation, one language?’ In Stephen Barbour
& Cathie Carmichael (Eds), Language and nationalism in Europe (pp. 44–82). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kahn, Marina (1994). ‘Educação indígena’ versus ‘educação para índios’: sim, a discussão
deve continuar . . . . [‘Indigenous education’ versus ‘education for Indians’: Yes, the
debate must continue . . . .] Em Aberto 63: 137–144.
Lippi-Green, Rosina (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge.
Mar-Molinero, Clare (2002). The Iberian Peninsula: Conflicting linguistic nationalisms.
In Stephen Barbour & Cathie Carmichael (Eds), Language and nationalism in Europe
(pp. 83–104). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Midlin, Betty (1997). Texto e Leitura na escola indígena. [Text and Reading in indigenous
schools.] In Wilmar D’Angelis & Juracilda Veiga (Eds), Leitura e escrita em escolas
indígenas [Reading and writing in indigenous schools] (pp. 53–80). Campinas: ALB,
Mercado de Letras.
Monte, Nietta Lindenberg (1996). Escolas da floresta: entre o passado oral e o presente
letrado. [Forest schools: Between the oral past and literate present.] Rio de Janeiro:
Multiletra.
Moura, Heronides Maurílio de Melo (2002). A língua popular tem razões que os
gramáticos desconhecem. [Popular language has reasons that grammarians ignore.] In
Fábio Lopes da Silva & Heronides M. de Melo Moura (Eds), O direito à fala – a questão
do preconceito lingüístico [The right of speaking – The question of linguistic prejudice],
2nd, revised edition (pp. 75–82). Florianópolis: Insular.
Oliveira, Gilvan Müller de (2002). Brasileiro fala português: monolingüismo e preconceito
lingüístico. [Brazilians speak Portuguese: Monolingualism and linguistic prejudice.] In
Fábio Lopes da Silva & Heronides M. de Melo Moura (Eds), O direito à fala – a questão
do preconceito lingüístico [The right of speaking – The question of linguistic prejudice],
2nd, revised edition (pp. 83–92). Florianópolis: Insular.
Rickford, John R. (1999). African American vernacular English: Features, evolution,
educational implications. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rodrigues, Aryon Dall’Igna (1985). The present state of the study of Brazilian Indian
languages. In Harriet E. Klein & Louisa R. Stark (Eds), South American Indian
languages: Retrospect and prospect (pp. 405–439). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Rodrigues, Aryon Dall’Igna (1998). Línguas Indígenas. descobertas e perdas. Parte II
[Indigenous languages: discoveries and losses. Part II.] Porantim (Dec), 5.
Rodrigues, Aryon Dall’Igna (1999). Macro-Jê. In R.M.W. Dixon & Alexandra Aikhenvald (Eds), The Amazonian languages (pp. 164–206). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rodrigues, Aryon Dall’Igna (n.d.). As línguas gerais sul-americanas. [South-American
general languages.] Retrieved from http://www.unb.br/il/liv/papers/aryon.htm on 1
February 2003).
Ruzza, Carlo (2002). Language and nationalism in Italy: Language as a weak marker of
identity. In Stephen Barbour & Cathie Carmichael (Eds), Language and nationalism in
Europe (pp. 168–182). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schmitz, John Robert (2002). O Projeto de Lei no. 1676/99 na imprensa de São Paulo”.
[The Projected Law 1676/99 in newspapers from São Paulo.] In Carlos Alberto Faraco
(Ed), Estrangeirismos – guerras em torno da língua [Foreign terms – language wars],
2nd edition (pp. 85–106). São Paulo: Parábola.
LANGUAGE POLICY IN BRAZIL
23
Silva, Fábio Lopes da & Moura, Heronides Maurílio de Melo (2002). Introdução. [Introduction.] In Fábio Lopes da Silva & Heronides M. de Melo Moura (Eds), O direito à fala
– a questão do preconceito lingüístico [The right of speaking – the question of linguistic
prejudice], 2nd, revised edition (pp. 9–15). Florianópolis: Insular.
Smitherman, Geneva (2000). Talkin’ that talk: Language, culture, and education in African
America. London: Routledge.
Spolsky, Bernard (1978). Educational linguistics – an introduction. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers.
Vikør, Lars S. (2002). Northern Europe: Languages as prime markers of ethnic and national
identity. In Stephen Barbour & Cathie Carmichael (Eds), Language and nationalism in
Europe (pp. 105–129). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wiley, Terence G. & Marguerite Lukes (1996). English-only and standard English
ideologies in the US. TESOL Quarterly, 30(3), 511–535.
Zilles, Ana Maria Stahl (2002). Ainda os equívocos no combate aos estrangeirismos. [Still
the misunderstandings in the combat against foreign terms.] In Carlos Alberto Faraco
(Ed), Estrangeirismos – guerras em torno da língua [Foreign terms – language wars],
2nd edition (pp. 143–161). São Paulo: Parábola.
Departamento de Lingüística
Faculdade de Ciências e Letras
Universidade Estadual Paulista – UNESP
Campus de Araraquara
Brazil
E-mail: [email protected]
[email protected]