Multilingualism and teaching at the borders

Abstract

The recent appreciation of multilingualism as part of the global agenda has led to a new understanding of the role that language plays in the contexts of education, network economy, technologies and planetary sustainability. In Brazil, such valorization involves the construction and legitimization of linguistic rights, as well as the processes which guarantee the access to these rights, creating, as one of its consequences, the need to approach the Portuguese language in the light of other Brazilian languages, especially in the field of public education. Starting at a brief characterization of the promotion of multilingualism in Brazil, this text proposes a reflection on the necessary repositioning of languages, and of the Portuguese language itself, as a result of this process. It also proposes a reflection on the presence of languages at school based on research carried out by the Observatory of Education at the Border (UNIR / UFSC / IPOL with the support of CAPES / OBEDUC) which demonstrates different types of silencing to which of a number of languages is subjected. Finally, this text discusses possible ways of dealing with multilingualism within the given contexts.