Teaching Brazilian Portuguese as an additional language from a decolonial perspective

From the recognition of norma curta as an expresion of coloniality to Bortoni-Ricardo's continua proposal

Abstract

The fact that we have not yet managed to free ourselves from an ideology that cultivates an anachronistic standard-norm demonstrates how our conceptions of language are still impregnated with coloniality. We seek to demonstrate here that the ideology of the norma curta (‘short norm’, Faraco, 2004, 2008, 2015b) is one of our  exponents of this pattern of colonial power (Quijano, 2000, 2005), and that it must, therefore, be  identified, delimited, so that it can be confronted. We propose to detach it from our teaching of Portuguese as an additional language, by extending Bortoni-Ricardo's (2004, 2005) continua to this area of studies, bringing the socio-history of Brazilian Portuguese (the knowledge of the causes) to the classroom, and providing as a legitimate model of linguistic reference the speech of those on the margins.