Do discurso sobre o Tupi para o discurso dos Tupi

Abstract

Focusing on the question of Brazilian linguistic diversity, this paper aims at analyzing the discourses about languages spoken in Brazil in the beginning of our colonization and their effects on the present sitution of indian education. We have searched to compare the means of producing meaning about such languages and their speakers in the text Voyage to Brazil, by Hans Staden (1557), and in some oral texts by the tupinikim nowadays. Throuh the analyses, we have shown in which ways the construction of an imaginary unit of the language and the Indian subject in the colonial period returns in present speeches as a discursive resonance, affecting social practices as well as identitary processes im Indian societies. Observing the functioning of several designations, we have also shown the inter-discursive means of production of meaning about the linguistic-cultural diversity in the country. In face of the problem of the teaching of tupi in Indian communities in which Portuguese is the only language spoken, this text wishes to contribute to a critical and consequent positioning regarding language teaching in indian context.