Portuguese, pluricontinental diasporic language

Portuguese, pluricontinental diasporic language

 

Call for Papers

Portuguese is official language in eight nation states: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and Timor-Leste. Globally, it is distinct as being a pluricontinental language, one of the few languages spoken on four continents: America, Europe, Africa and Asia, by about 260 million people. Thus, Portuguese is one of the most spoken languages in the world and one of the main languages of cyberculture.

 

Being an official language of a country, however, does not imply its exclusivity, rather, it is typically an imposed language in coexistence with many others. As such, Portuguese has evolved in response to its own cultural heritage, repertoires and local standardization (specific dictionaries and grammars), what is understood as Angolan Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Cape Verdean Portuguese, Mozambican Portuguese etc. These varieties reflect particular sociolinguistic repertoires which were formed in the colonial diaspora – transatlantic and beyond – in contact with local people and languages of each continent.

 

For this edition, we invite transcontinental researchers to contribute to this edition of the linguistic journal Porto das Letras that explore the many and diversified repertoires and varieties of Portuguese. The editors welcome papers from various theoretical perspectives and Portuguese-language settings. We invite papers that consider diverse aspects of the use of Portuguese, in their respective territoriality, for example (but not limited to), describing the sociolinguistic situation of Portuguese across particular domains of life; outlining the influence of local language on the use of Portuguese; evaluating and/or arguing for linguistic policies to support Portuguese or other languages; identifying and/or comparing linguistic shifts in Portuguese; as well as problematizing educational policies and planning involving Portuguese and contact languages, linguistic education and pluri and transcultural literacies.

 

 

Call for papers closes: 15 November 2023.