Monolingual ideology, commodification and instrumentalization of English in the 2017 amendment of Brazilian educational law and in publicity campaigns of English courses

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the publicity of English courses and the recent legal imposition of the language in Brazilian middle and high schools. The reference corpus consists of five publicity campaigns of English courses displayed during the first semester of 2017 in a city of Santa Catarina state and the text of the recently amended Brazilian educational law (LDB 9,394/1996). In addition, the legal amendment is contextualized along with the development of the national common curriculum (BNCC). Our objective is to problematize and to show how the publicity of English courses and the recent legal amendment contribute to a linguistic hierarchy which socio-historically constructs English as a hegemonic and reified language. Data analysis shows that both the publicity and the law may underestimate the importance of multilingualism and at the same time may strengthen the commodification of monolingual ideals related to English language teaching.

KEYWORDS:
commodity; reification; bilingualism; international language