If you have the word in Portuguese why are you going to use it in English? Language ideologies of Brazilian Portuguese speaker studying English as a foreign language in Cape Town
Master Thesis
2015
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University of Cape Town
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This study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about the spread of English in Brazil. Brazilian Portuguese is the official and by far most spoken language in Brazil. In spite of being a multilingual country, several policies guided the country towards monolingualism. A bill has been recently proposed by the then congressman Aldo Rebelo, in 1999, and approved in 2007 that regards English as a threat to the Brazilian Po1tuguese language. Nonetheless, the bill has not yet been approved and still sits in the Senate's assembly due to strong opposition of the mainstream media, sociolinguists and marketing companies. English has spread quickly in Brazil, especially from the end of the 201h century to current days. According to several studies, the influence of English is specially noticed in brand naming, advertisements and people's names. Studies have also shown that English is also perceived as a prestigious language that attaches attributes of modernity, sophistication and connectivity with a globalized world to its speakers' identity. English is also the most studied foreign language in Brazilian schools. However, studies have shown that English teaching in Brazilian schools is perceived as weak and unsatisfactory mostly by students (Bernardo, 2007; Dias and Assis-Peterson, 2006), leading Brazilians to seek for English teaching in private English institutes. Another viable option for Brazilians has been the language programs to study English abroad. This study aims to understand how Brazilian Portuguese speakers who are studying English in Cape Town construct their language ideologies regarding English and Portuguese. The study uses two key concepts to guide the discussion, global Englishes and language ideologies. Overall, this study confirms findings of other studies, such as the perception of the participants towards Brazilian regular schools and English institutes. Moreover it contributes to the incipient literature concerning the perception of mobile students with regard to language programs to study English abroad. This study used a text to remind participants about the proposed bill by congressman Rebelo to elicit language ideologies around English and Portuguese. Most of the participants in this study positioned themselves as against the bill. Most of them claimed that language change is natural, and such attitude welcomes English borrowings which could be observed in the participants' interviews.
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Includes bibliography.
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Araujo, M. 2015. If you have the word in Portuguese why are you going to use it in English? Language ideologies of Brazilian Portuguese speaker studying English as a foreign language in Cape Town. University of Cape Town.