title: International Portuguese language promotion policies: a critical investigation of the discourses of Portugal, Brazil and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) (CPLP)
Creators: name: Delfino, Martina
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2024

description: The international promotion of the Portuguese language is today an official objective actively pursued by three distinct political entities. These are Portugal, Brazil and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) (CPLP)—a supranational entity comprising nine countries where Portuguese is an official language. Marginally acknowledged by the academic discussions thus far, the coexistence of three promoters and the interactions among their policies within the realm of international Portuguese language promotion has yet to receive scholarly attention. With the aim to contribute to this gap, in this project, I raise critical questions regarding the existing dynamics among Portugal, Brazil and the CPLP policies of international Portuguese language promotion. 

Anchored in a critical and discursive approach to language policy and planning (LPP) and integrated by a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a theoretical and methodological framework, in this project I explore the discursive construction of the relationship between Portugal and Brazil’s policies of Portuguese language promotion (RQ1); the role of the language promotion objective within the CPLP (RQ2); and the discursive construction of pluricentricity in the realm of Portuguese language promotion (RQ3). Employing Fairclough’s three stage model of CDA analysis, I examine twenty interviews with policymakers from Portugal, Brazil, and the CPLP and four policy documents, called Action Plans, elaborated within the context of the CPLP for the promotion of the Portuguese language (Planos de Ação).

By shedding light on how power is structured and legitimised among the three promoters, the findings reveal that while Portugal capitalizes on its colonial legacy by the construction of discursive frameworks that leverage the collective identity of Portuguese language countries, it reinforces and asserts its dominant position in the field. In contrast, Brazil and CPLP member countries often uncritically embrace this established power framework, consequently perpetuating asymmetric power structures.

By contributing to existing knowledge on power relations among Portugal, Brazil and the CPLP, the findings demonstrate the methodological value of using the coexistence of policies aimed at the international promotion of the same language as an analytical framework to explore power dynamics among promoting entities. At the same time, the findings provide theoretical contributions to the field of language policy and planning (LPP) in two aspects. Firstly, they confirm the applicability of a discursive approach to LPP for the analysis of macro-level language policies operating on an international scale. Secondly, they demonstrate that the multilayered nature of an LPP is significantly influenced by its interplay with other policies operating within the same language context and which are aimed at achieving similar goals.