This document discusses the Portuguese and Brazilian diasporas in the United States and issues around promoting the Portuguese language. It notes that while Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants came to the US at different times and with different intentions, their communities generally do not interact. It explores challenges around identity and stereotypes. The document advocates for greater collaboration between Portuguese-speaking communities and countries to jointly promote the Portuguese language, especially in areas where their diaspora populations overlap. This includes creating Portuguese language and cultural centers and developing heritage language programs. The conclusion emphasizes that despite linguistic differences, Portuguese remains the same language across countries and communities.

1. New Paradigms Regarding the
Portuguese Language and
the Lusophone Diasporas in the
Unites States
Valeria D. da Silva-Sasser
Tatiana Dutra e Mello
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2. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Perspective
- Portuguese immigration to the USA started in the 19th century
- The Portuguese immigrants, in general, had a perspective of
coming to stay, be assimilated, and build a permanent life
here.
- Brazilian immigration to the USA in the second of half of the
20th century
- The Brazilian immigrants, in the beginning and for a long time,
considered immigration as something temporary. These
immigrants are rapidly reaching the level of transnationality of
other Latino immigrants in California, such as Mexican and El
Salvadorians.
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3. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Perspective
- In general, these Portuguese and Brazilian diasporic
communities do not mingle in the United States, and that
extends many times to academia. Identity issues are one of the
concerns.
- According to Lisboa (2009), “to catch this game between
familiarity and estrangement, attraction and rejection, can be a
promising way to evaluate the ambiguities always present in
the cultural and political approximations between Brazil and
Portugal that are in the formulation of a “Lusophone Block”, in
the contemporary geopolitics”.
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4. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Perspective
- Identity issues in cross-cultural programs are a point in which
teachers working with Diasporas from different countries must
be very careful.
- According to Cosme Santos (2008), “the teacher as a literacy
agent must have special attention to the stereotyped images of
Brazil when teaching language without specific material.”
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5. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Perspective
- Still according to Lisboa (2009), “If one wants to psychoanalyze
this ineluctable familiar romance that reunites Portugal and
Brazil (what is not absurd when we reflect upon identity
relations), it will be necessary to seek for the Freudian concept
of melancholy, that describes the loss of an object of desire not
yet processed by grief.”
- In our opinion, identity and imagery issues are maybe the
greatest barriers to an effective collaboration of the two
countries abroad. This is why most of the significative efforts to
maintain and expand the Portuguese language, shared by both
migrant communites, are still being made in isolation within
each diasporic community or is coming from outside both of
them all together.
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6. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Perspective
- The prominence of Brazil in the world's economy has boosted
the interest in the language: lacking a fully prepared workforce,
Brazil has been hiring foreigners as never before.
- Recently, the number of foreigners in Brazil surpassed the
number of Brazilians that emigrated (1.510 million)
(Revista Super Interessante, 2012).
- Portuguese is, currently, the language that is aligned with
economic development, or is perceived as such. Nevertheless,
that is not the case of the scientific knowledge.
- The Portuguese policy of producing and publishing scientific
knowledge directly in English is a really inconsistent strategy,
since it effectively removes the Portuguese Language from all
major international scientific databases.
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7. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Perspective
- There is no neutral environment for language and culture
production. As Foucault wisely stated ”knowledge is power”,
and under this premise, when we choose to produce
knowledge in a given language, the literature, the sources, the
environment, the academia, the written style, themes and
problems, are all co-related. (Castro, 2010)
- Portugal's policy of producing and publishing scientific
knowledge directly in English is a really inconsistent strategy,
since it effectively removes the Portuguese Language from all
major international scientific databases.
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8. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Perspective
- To be more effective, it is necessary that a policy for defense
and promotion of the Portuguese language come from the
CPLP, from a tri-lateral collaboration between Brazil, Portugal,
and Cape Verde, specially in areas where communities from
these countries co-exist. (Scott, 2010)
- There is a need to create centers for joint multidisciplinary
Portuguese, Brazilian, Luso-African, and Luso-Asian studies in
some American universities, and the creation of CPLP's
language and culture centers, open to the public, in cities of
great relevance to the international economy and with great
market potential. The politics to promote Portuguese as a
language for international communication must be constant and
more aggressive than what it has been, to make it possible for
the Portuguese to compete with other languages that are
growing in an international level, such as Mandarin. 8

9. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Conclusions
- It is our vision that the Portuguese-speaking Diasporas must
stop searching for differences to remain separated, and,
instead, must be with eye open to identify all the common
grounds they share, including cultural and linguistic identity, in
order to push for common, similar public policies regarding the
Portuguese language.
- Although this type of collaboration has never been done by
these two countries, we can look at the Hispanic community
for a model of coming together without losing their
national/ethnic identities. The Hispanics defend a common
language, despite especific national differences.
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10. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Conclusions
- Portuguese is the fifth most spoken language in the world, with
280 million speakers. With such numbers, it is a powerful
commodity. It is impossible to ignore the potential of such a
language, and the political positioning that a joint or
collaborative public policy can establish.
- Portuguese as spoken in Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, and
Angola, just to mention a few, is the same language, and as
stated by Boleo, it is needed “to create in the Portuguese and
in the Brazilians, a mentality and a consciousness of unity of
language, in which are accepted within the cultural norms,
certain differences in pronunciation, lexicon and, to a lesser
extent, syntactic construction, and that these differences do
not affect the aforementioned unit idiomatic.”(1968)
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11. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Conclusions
- We cannot and must not let nationalisms, misguided
conceptions of what a language is, and the intolerance for
linguistic differences, dictate the language policies for
Portuguese. This is particularly true and urgent in the
Diasporas, where the pressures to assimilate are
enormous and the resources to preserve our language
and pass it on to our children are minor. In this context,
synergy is the only logical step and a necessary one, if we
are really serious about transmitting to our children what
is rightfully theirs.
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12. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Conclusions
- Beyond the language usage, the fact that the economic
prospects of Brazil are immense, we can only expect that,
along with goods and services, Brazil will export its
language and culture. Doing so, indirectly benefits all
Portuguese-speaking countries, as every single speaker of
Portuguese is a consumer or potential consumer of
cultural and touristic products.
- Besides, the international interest in Brazilian culture
indirectly increases the interest in the cultures of other
Portuguese-speaking communities, with all the added
(economic) benefits that come along with it.
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13. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Conclusions
- In this scenario, it is fundamental to work with and within the
Diasporas to develop actions and programs in order to create
the awareness about the importance of learning
Portuguese as heritage language or as second language.
- This knowledge must be published in Portuguese and included
as such in international scientific databases, if Portuguese is to
become a language of science and technological advancement.
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14. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Helen Joyce, The Economist’s correspondent in Brazil, and not of
Portuguese or Brazilian heritage: “Some lunatics learn languages for fun.
The rest of us are looking for a decent return on our investment. That
means choosing a language with plenty of native speakers. One spoken by
people worth talking to, in a place worth visiting. One not so distant from
English that you give up. There really is only one rational choice: Brazilian
Portuguese. Brazil is big (190m residents; half a continent). Its economic
prospects are bright. São Paulo is Latin America’s business capital. No other
country has flora and fauna more varied and beautiful. It is home to the
world’s largest standing forest, the Amazon. The weather is great and so are
the beaches. . You’ll learn hundreds of words without effort (azul means
blue, verde means green) and be able to guess entire sentences. With new
pronunciation and a few new words, you’ll get around in Portugal and parts
of Africa. The people are friendly. You’ll be told “Your Portuguese is
wonderful!” many times before it is true.” (2013)
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15. New Paradigms Regarding the Portuguese Language and the Lusophone Diasporas in the Unites States
Thank you!
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