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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 198

Part of General Poster Session (Other abstracts in this session)

The linguistic landscape of São Paulo (Brazil): its complexities and challenges in the days ahead

Authors: Rajagopalan, Kanavillil
Submitted by: Rajagopalan, Kanavillil (State University at Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil)

The city of São Paulo, a sprawling megalopolis of around 11 million inhabitants (upwards of 19 million, if you consider the greater city) is the financial, industrial and cultural hub and nerve-centre, not only of Brazil but the entire continent of South America. It is claimed to be the largest city in the Southern and Western hemispheres. It attracts an endless stream of immigrants from the rest of the country as well as the rest of South America. Over the past decades, the city, along with the rest of the country, has also attracted waves of immigrants from countries across the world, looking for better job opportunities of which there is no dearth. São Paulo boasts significant pockets of immigrants from Portugal, Italy, Japan, Korea, the United States, China and so forth. And in the hundreds of sweatshops that have sprung up in the alleyways of the inner city, different dialects of Spanish, often with a sprinkling of indigenous languages such as Guarani and Quechua are routinely heard.

Historically, the country’s language policy was one of total assimilation geared towards fostering monolingualism in all spheres of public life. But the recent turn of events marked by large scale migrations have made considerable dents into traditional ways of going about implementing language policies or rather simply abstaining from taking any stance vis-à-vis growing but largely ignored multilingualism (mostly in extra-official spheres). As a matter of fact, there was very little by way of language planning or policy implementation, except leaving things untouched as though they were going to be resolved on their own over time.

But clearly recognizable changes are already there on the horizon. There is widespread recognition today of the fact that Portuguese, the country’s national and official language, is not a major player on the international stage and that, with all its ambitions to weigh in more and more on international affairs, the country needs to invest in making its population functionally proficient in two other international languages to wit, English and Spanish. This is clearly reflected in the decision by some of the country’s major newspapers to have on their web-sites pages in English and Spanish with a summary of the day’s headline-making stories.

There have been some initiatives, albeit timid and often ill-conceived, to introduce the teaching of the two languages at primary and secondary school levels. As for the tertiary, i.e. university, level, a working knowledge of English is obligatory and an absolute must for entry into post-graduate courses. But the fact remains that the country is currently caught between competing wishes for establishing itself as a regional power and being a player in the world at large, hopefully earning a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. In linguistic terms, this tension translates itself as one between Spanish and English. It is a veritable balancing act, shot through with political implications of all sorts. In addition, the official policy of the state is often at loggerheads with the public attitudes towards foreign languages.