■ ABSTRACT: We aim at critically discussing the colonial process of language discursivization in America. Such discursivization integrated the Iberian colonial mechanism, centered in Spain and Portugal, from the sixteenth century on. The paper presents and discusses the way languages and people were put into discourses from a power framework centered on the logic of modernity/coloniality. Examples of this discursivization include the production of grammars, dictionaries, word lists, catechisms and the translation of religious and administrative European discursive genres to a non-European context. It is argued that the colonial discursivization of peoples and languages was framed by an Eurocentric interpretation which left its effects until today. The article relies on the theoretical framework of colonial Linguistics and Latin American postcolonial criticism, both focused on a historical and discursive perspective. Finally, we consider that the colonial experience is complex, which means that the colonial encounter produced the emergence of resistance and cultural hybridizations ■

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O texto apresenta e discute os conceitos de poder e de política no campo de saber intitulado "Política Linguística". Para tanto, inicialmente apresenta e discute a heterogeneidade e complexidade do campo, discorrendo sobre os conceitos de Política e Planejamento Linguísticos. Em seguida, apresenta os trabalhos genealógicos do filósofo francês Michel Foucault acerca da relação entre poder, saber e política. Para fins de discussão, o artigo apresenta uma série de casos, tanto reais como possíveis, de aplicação e intervenção do campo de Política Linguística, com vistas tanto a discutir a noção de poder em conceitos e metodologias utilizadas pela área de saber, como a expandir o lócus de intervenção da disciplina a partir de possíveis contribuições de Michel Foucault sobre a dinâmica das relações de poder aplicada aos estudos das relações entre as línguas, as línguas e os sujeitos, as línguas e a tecnologia, e as línguas e uma dada geopolítica.

A vast amount of literature addresses issues surrounding English and French in colonial and post-colonial communities. However, relative to the spread of English and French language ideology, a limited amount of literature exists on Lusitanization (i.e. the spread of Portuguese colonial ideology by Portugal during colonialism and the role of Brazil in post-colonial Portuguese societies). To fill this gap, this paper analyses the role, functions and spread of Portuguese in colonial and post-colonial Angola and East Timor using Lusitanization as a framework to capture the role played by Portugal during the colonial eras and Brazil in post-colonial societies. Even though Lusitanization creates a space to analyse the role of Portuguese at a macro-level, a macro-view is inadequate for a situated analysis. Therefore, to complement the macroanalysis, we explore the impact of Lusitanization from the bottom up, drawing upon Bakhtinian perspectives of social voices, pluri-diversity, plurilingualism and hybridization.

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This chapter explores how language was used in the racial construction of differences and equalities in colonial and post-independent contexts by analyzing the meanings attributed to Portuguese as a language in the colonial era of Brazil and Angola, two former Portuguese colonies. Brazil and Angola played an important role in Portuguese colonization by both contributing and suffering the effects of the use of categories such as language and race as strategy of control and resistance. The chapter argues and illustrates that the ideas of customs, language, and other cultural markers were signs of “civilization” in Portuguese colonization. The deliberate designing of the overlapping categories of language and Portuguese social customs has produced ethnic, social, and political differentiations whose legacy is still apparent in pernicious ways.

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-The aim of this article is to critically discuss the role played by discourses and practices of language diversity in the framework of the 'reason of the state'. This article investigates the way the 'will to know' about language diversity has worked in Brazil, from its colonial period until nowadays, related to the colonial device and the state government. In order to do so, we fi rst present Michel Foucault's conceptions of reason of state and of the birth of the modern states in Europe in relation to the religious and scientifi c domains. Then, a panoramic analysis of the discourses and practices of language diversity in the Brazilian context since the 16 th century is offered. We argue that that the interest in linguistic diversity and its promotion does not mean that discursive diversity is also being promoted, since the existence of language diversity does not imply, necessarily, the existence and protection of a variety of cultures, ways of being, thinking and acting in the world.