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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 772

Part of Session 125: The legitimate speaker in a transforming political economy (Other abstracts in this session)

The Portuguese state and its heritage schools at the age of the new economy: what kind of legitimacy and for whom?

Authors: Steiner, Mariana
Submitted by: Steiner, Mariana (University of Teacher Education, Switzerland)

There are many countries which, because of a strong tradition of emigration, offer courses of language and culture of origin (heritage schools) to their emigrant communities. This is the case for Portugal, which has made available this kind of teaching in many European and non-European countries since the 1970's. The political and financial support of  teaching the Portuguese language abroad involves significant investments on the part of the Portuguese state and, has, today perhaps more than ever, to be legitimised with policy decision makers. Since the time of their creation, the economic and social changes have been numerous, both within the nation and regarding the wider geo-political context, forcing heritage schools to adapt themselves as well as their legitimising discourses to the economic and political requirements of the state. The initial discourse based on principles related to linguistic nationalism, the idea of a return to the country of origin and the linguistic rights of immigrant communities has not disappeared completely but gradually given way) to a new discourse, namely, thatof language as a value in an economic and professional space transcending both the country of origin and the host country. This discourse does not replace the first one; they coexist. This coexistence leads to the difficult situation where heritage schools have to reconcile the contradiction of claiming a new position, i.e. the enhancement of multilingualism as an added value in the global economic market, based on old values, which are first and foremost national.

Through a historiographical analysis of institutional documents produced by the Portuguese state, my paper will address the following issues: (1) to highlight the context and the conditions that allowed the emergence of these two types of discourse, (2) to understand how these two types of discourse concur in constructing what constitutes the Portuguese legitimate language as well as who is a legitimate speaker of Portuguese, and (3) to highlight areas of ideological continuities and discontinuities underlying these seemingly contradictory discourses.

References:

Bourdieu, P. (1982). Ce que parler veut dire : l’économie des échanges linguistiques.  Paris : Fayard.

Duchêne, A. (2008). Ideologies across nations. The construction of linguistic minorities at the United Nations. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Bourdieu, P. (2001). Langage et pouvoir symbolique. Paris : Seuil.

Heller, M. & Martin-Jones, M. (eds) (2001). Voices of authority, education and linguistic difference. Westport: Ablex Publishing