Language policy as a policy of territorial domain: : the U.S. department of defense and the critical languages

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the National Security Education Program, an Education program maintained by the U.S. Department of Defense, whose objective is the learning of what they call “critical-need” languages in relation to their areas. We base our discussion on studies in the field of discourse in their encounter with the History of Linguistic Ideas, which thinks of languages in their historicity as a “symbolic body” and language policies, that is, the tensions that run through political meanings for languages in social struggles (ORLANDI, 2007). As a corpus of analysis, we focused on the texts described on the Program's website, considering both the aspects of the constitution of its history, objectives and scope, as well as the descriptive tables in which they demonstrate the areas and critical languages that are priorities for the U.S. government. In our analysis, it was possible to discuss the process of meaning production that engenders as evidence, nowadays, a certain relationship between languages and territories. In our analysis, as a way of working with the said and the unsaid constitutive of the process of signification of this program, we trace a path that passes through the historicity of dominations in relation to language learning as a war strategy, a strategy that goes beyond the military field.