The language overseas : senses adrift - the CPLP's discourse on the portuguese language

Author(s)

Luiza Katia Andrade Castello Branco

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2013-00-00

Examining board members

Cláudia Regina Castellanos Pfeiffer; Bethania Sampaio Correa Mariani; José Simão Silva Sobrinho; Mónica Zoppi Fontana

• Advisor: Carolina Maria Rodríguez Zuccolillo

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand how the discourse of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) about "Portuguese language" has been functioning, as founded on the basis of an imaginary of homogeneity of languages producing the evidence that "Portuguese language" is one and the same language spoken by all citizens in its eight Member States. In order to observe and analyze the production processes of these meaning effects, the corpus is constituted of materials about language(s) (in special the Portuguese Languages in Angolan, Brazilian, Cape-verdean, Bissau-Guinean, Mozambican, Portuguese, Santomean spaces), and about multilingualism, ethnoculturalism and languages policies. For this, besides academic studies, we collected normative instruments produced by CPLP and by its Member States' governs, by UNESCO, by The African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), such as Minutes, Recommendations, Declarations, Constitutions, Agreements, Statutes, Treaties, Protocols, Covenants, among others that, during the research, were relevant for the analysis. This work is inscribed in the realm of the History of Linguistic Ideas (HIL), under the materialist perspective, and configured by the theoretical and analytical devices of the Discourse Analysis - as proposed by Michel Pêcheux's studies (France, 1966-1983), and by Eni Orlandi's (Brazil, 1971-) - that allows to conjugate the history of the society and its ideology together with the history of the production of scientific knowledge about a language, and the history of the language(s). Based on this perspective, we described, interpreted and understood the complex way the production processes of meaning about Portuguese Language in the CPLP's discourse has been functioning taking as observation points the notions of "lusophony", "national language", "official language" and "linguistic policy" articulated to notions of "community", "nation" and "State". It is also highlighted the question of the International Organization taken on the evidence of being a homogeneous and supranational space. Our hypothesis is that the gesture of forming a community as the CPLP, in the way it is conceived, has been silencing meanings such as the one of the heterogeneity peculiar to "Portuguese language", the one of asymmetric relationship of this language to the other languages spoken in those Member States, or the one of the different ways this language has been historicized in those spaces, determining and being determined by the relationship always political among subjects and languages in the struggle for meaning. This way, we have understood by the analyses that the effects of meaning of Portuguese Language are adrift and oncoming if related to difference, what may make them correspond or not to national language, mother language or official language meanings, but always being other Portuguese Languages in space* (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 10/15878-3 - The language overseas: senses adrift - the discourse of CPLP on the Portuguese language
• Grantee: Luiza Katia Andrade Castello Branco
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate