GRAMMATIZATION: AND CAMOUFLAGED RACISM

Abstract

This article examines racism within the process of grammatization, understood as the intellectual technology that systematizes certain languages into grammars and dictionaries while excluding others, thereby reinforcing linguistic and social inequalities. Drawing on Rodrigues Alcalá and Aquino (2024), it shows that grammatization operates through selection, legitimizing specific linguistic forms and marginalizing those not chosen, as seen in Brazil’s colonial past with the standardization of Tupi and the suppression of numerous Indigenous languages. This linguistic exclusion aligns with broader ideological mechanisms of racial and class-based discrimination, as discussed by Sousa (2022) and Queiroz (2022), who highlight how institutional discourses continue to associate poverty, criminalization, and illiteracy with racialized groups. The text also emphasizes that the rise of European nation-states, mercantile capitalism, and urbanization strengthened grammatization as a political tool of unification. Thus, the article analyzes how this historical process still shapes contemporary forms of racism and linguistic inequality, drawing on authors such as Silvio Almeida and Tucci Carneiro.