International Journal of Bilingual Education and

Bilingualism

ISSN: 1367-0050 (Print) 1747-7522 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbeb20

The emergence of bilingual education discourse

in Brazil: bilingualisms, language policies, and
globalizing circumstances

Laura Fortes

To cite this article: Laura Fortes (2015): The emergence of bilingual education discourse in
Brazil: bilingualisms, language policies, and globalizing circumstances, International Journal of
Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2015.1103207

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2015.1103207

Published online: 27 Oct 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 23

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rbeb20

Download by: [Umeå University Library] Date: 15 February 2016, At: 12:57
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2015.1103207

The emergence of bilingual education discourse in Brazil:

bilingualisms, language policies, and globalizing circumstances
Laura Fortes
Modern Languages and Literatures Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper discusses the social and political implications of the emergence Received 10 April 2015
of Portuguese-English bilingual education discourse in Brazil, which has Accepted 13 September 2015
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

been widely disseminated since the 1990s. Initially, a discursive analysis

KEYWORDS
of prestige bilingualism concepts will be presented. Second, the issue of Bilingual education;
language policies will be addressed through the analysis of the discourse; bilingualism;
discursive disjunction ‘public school English’/‘private language school Brazil; language policy;
English’. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the globalizing globalization
circumstances implied in internationalization practices of private
educational provision in Brazil underlying the emergence of Portuguese-
English bilingual schools in the country. Finally, these three issues will
be articulated in order to understand bilingual education discourse in
Brazil as emerging from and interacting with existing discursivities of
English language teaching/learning practices which were historically and
politically established in the national educational system.

Introduction
Pêcheux (2014)1 defines the work of the discourse analyst as the one in which there is a tension
between description and interpretation. The conditions of production of discourse are considered
in their connections with historical and social conjunctures that shape the possibilities of what can
be stated and what cannot be stated about a specific event. By analyzing the conditions of pro-
duction of discursivities, the discourse analyst attempts to engage in a ‘reading gesture’ (Pêcheux
1997) that enables them to describe the event considering those conditions and, concurrently, to
interpret the processes of signification that they encompass.
As well as Pêcheux (2014), Foucault (1972) was also concerned about the modes by which mean-
ings are produced and regulated. In both discursive perspectives, meanings are seen as effects of the
very processes within which they emerge.
The question posed by language analysis of some discursive fact or other is always: according to what rules has a
particular statement been made, and consequently according to what rules could other similar statements be
made? The description of the events of discourse poses a quite different question: how is it that one particular
statement appeared rather than another? (Foucault 1972, 27)

Both Pêcheux and Foucault focus more on how enonces2 appear and become readable, interpret-
able, under certain conditions, rather than on what enonces ‘mean’ in a specific ‘context’.
Considering that the main focus of this paper is to discuss the emergence of Portuguese-English
bilingual education discourses in Brazil since the end of the twentieth century, I am particularly inter-
ested in understanding ‘the status of the discursivities that traverse an event’ (Pêcheux 2014, 82). The

CONTACT Laura Fortes laurates@usp.br

© 2015 Taylor & Francis
 2 L. FORTES

‘event’, in this case, is designated by sociolinguistics as ‘prestige bilingualism’ or ‘elite bilingualism’

(De Mejía 2002) and is related to the dissemination of the so-called bilingual schools in Brazil.
Following the discursive analysis of prestige bilingualism concepts – which are the ones gen-
erally associated with the emergence of Portuguese-English schools in Brazil – I discuss the histori-
cal implications of language policies, as well as the globalizing circumstances and political
entailments implied in internationalization practices of Brazilian private educational provision,
demonstrating how they are closely related to processes of discursivization of bilingual education
in Brazil.

Bilingualisms in processes of designation

Although there is an extensive literature addressing bilingualism and bilingual education in psycho-
linguistic, cognitive and sociolinguistic perspectives (Baker 2011; Bialystok 2001; Cummins and Swain
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

1986; García and BaetensBeardsmore 2008; Grosjean 1982; Hamers and Blanc 2000; Heller 2007;
Romaine 1989), only a few researchers – such as De Mejía (2002) – have shown concern for the spe-
cificities of elite/prestige bilingualism. This type of bilingualism is often defined either on the basis of
class – ‘elite’ bilingualism – or on the basis of status – ‘prestige’ bilingualism. In the former definition,
the emphasis is on the social positions occupied by those who wish to ‘become bilingual’; in the latter
definition, the focus is on politically and ideologically constructed representations ascribed to (and
inscribed in) languages. However, albeit there is an attempt in the literature to distinguish these defi-
nitions, they do not seem to operate statically separated in the production of meaning; rather ‘class’
slides3 to ‘status’ and vice-versa, as evident in the following definitions by De Mejía (2002):
[ … ] this form of bilingualism is highly ‘visible’, in the sense that it provides access to prestigious international
languages for those upwardly mobile individuals and their families who need or who wish to be bilingual or multi-
lingual. Becoming bilingual for many students who come from higher socio-economic status groups means the
possibility of being able to interact with speakers of different languages on a daily basis, and of gaining access to
employment opportunities in the global marketplace. (De Mejía 2002, 5)
[ … ] these individuals often come from families who travel extensively because of the international nature of
their occupations and commitments or because of their socio-economic status. They are usually upwardly
mobile and see the need to be bilingual or multilingual in order to have access to good job opportunities at inter-
national level. The languages that such bilinguals learn are world languages of established power and prestige,
such as English, French, German, and Spanish. (De Mejía 2002, 41)

Since class and status constitute the core elements used to define prestige bilingualism, these defi-
nitions generally focus on bilingual subjects, rather than on language acquisition itself. In this way, De
Mejía (2002) highlights that because elite bilingualism evokes identification with class and status, it is
generally associated with pejorative or prejudicial meanings. According to the researcher, this may be
associated with ‘the difficulty of using a socially loaded term like “elite” to refer to a type of bilingu-
alism which, while it is not a majority situation, is becoming increasingly common in an ever-shrink-
ing globalised universe’ (De Mejía 2002, 42).
In this way, definitions of ‘elite bilingualism’ based on the notion of ownership of a high status
language, such as ‘prestigious bilingualism’ (Baker & Prys Jones 1998 cited in De Mejía 2002, 42),
or ‘privileged bilingualism’ (De Mejía 2002, 43) started being avoided by other researchers in the
field, since these definitions used to give emphasis to ‘the privilege of middle-class, well-educated
members of most societies’ (Paulston 1975 cited in De Mejía 2002, 41). Thus, the following terms
have been preferred to designate this kind of bilingualism:

(1) ‘elective bilingualism’ (Valdés & Figueroa 1994, 12 cited in De Mejía 2002, 41) and ‘optional bilin-
gualism’ (De Mejía 2002, 43), which emphasize the aspect of ‘choice’ rather than class;
(2) ‘voluntary bilingualism’ (Ogbu 1982 cited in De Mejía 2002, 43), which focuses on the individual’s
choice of learning a language, as opposed to situations where the language is learned ‘involun-
tarily’ through imposition;
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 3

(3) ‘enrichment bilingualism’ (Fishman 1982 cited in De Mejía 2002, 43), which has been used to refer
to immersion education programs aiming at the balanced development of both the first
language and the second language, irrespective of their status.

All these terms have been used to characterize and describe specific language acquisition prac-
tices. The first designation, elective bilingualism, or optional bilingualism, focuses on language acqui-
sition practices which are not necessarily connected to formal instruction environments and which
are chosen by individuals who wish to become bilingual in their home countries. The second
term, voluntary bilingualism, implies formal and informal language acquisition practices in immigra-
tion contexts, whose complex political, ethnic and cultural processes frequently produce a divide
between immigrants who are in a privileged position and really choose to learn the immigration
country’s language and unprivileged immigrants (slaves, refugees, etc.) who have to learn the
language involuntarily, that is, they have to submit to the language imposed to them under unfavor-
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

able circumstances. The third term, enrichment bilingualism, focuses on language acquisition prac-
tices which aim at developing and promoting both the first and the second languages through
immersion education programs.
These terms constitute a meaning-making network which resembles what Guimarães (2002, 9)
defined as designation:
[ … ] designation can be defined as the signification of a name, but not as something abstract. It is signification as
something constitutive of language relationships, as a linguistic (symbolic) relationship related to the real,
exposed to the real, that is, as a relationship considered in its historical dimension (my translation).

In this way, processes of designation cannot be separated from the real. Therefore, exteriority is con-
stitutive of meaning and is conceived discursively as historicity in dynamic signification movements.
When it comes to the processes of designation of bilingualism previously described, the shift from the
focus on status/class to the focus on choice seems to constitute a new mode of discursive regulation
of the meanings of bilingualism operated by the signifier ‘choice’, which evokes a kind of agency on
the part of the subject. But what subject positions are at stake here? Whose decisions do these bilin-
gual practices demand and, at the same time, mobilize? As for the term ‘enrichment’, although it
attempts to dislocate the definition of bilingualism from the social hierarchical class category, it
seems to actually reiterate the notion of upward social mobility as directly related to language acqui-
sition in immersion programs.
Considering the prolific production of definitions that constitute the chain of meanings engen-
dered by this discursive process, the event most commonly labeled ‘prestige bilingualism’ I argue
should be rather pluralized as bilingualisms.
[ … ] there is no bilingualism (bi = two), as well as there is no monolingualism. There are not two languages, as
well as there is not an only language. Every language [ … ] is constituted of innumerable other languages which
have left the traces of their presence in the one designated as a language. (Uyeno and Cavallari 2011, authors’
emphasis is in bold, my translation).

This gesture of pluralization attempts to highlight the heterogeneous meanings of bilingualism and bilin-
gual education, focusing rather on modes of language production as practices (Pennycook 2010) which
are embedded in social, historical and political conjunctures. Even though bilingual education practices –
such as prestige bilingualism – encompass an ‘additive bilingualism’ perspective which claims that both
the first and the second languages are used equally as a means of instruction, I am mostly concerned
about the evidence of transparency constructed around the term ‘bilingualism’ in linguistics and edu-
cation discourses. Thus, by pluralizing this term, the stability and transparency of the prefix ‘bi’ can be
questioned, since it implies a duality that entails an ontological view of language in which languages
are conceived as unitary entities (Pennycook 2001, 2010) that can be possessed by individuals.
When it comes to the specific political and historical conditions underlying educational provisions
in Brazil, what heterogeneous meanings of bilingualism and bilingual education are produced? How
 4 L. FORTES

do these meanings relate to previously established meanings of English language teaching/learning

in Brazil, considering particular language policies historically implemented? These questions are
addressed in the following section, which presents a brief historical account of language policies
in Brazil, focusing on foreign language teaching legislations and their impacts on the discursivization
of English language teaching/learning practices in the country.

Language policies and the discursive disjunction ‘public school English’/‘private

language school English’
According to Donnini, Platero, and Weigel (2010), from 1855 to 1961, the teaching of foreign
languages in Brazil was regulated by a plurilingual curriculum. In 1855, French, English, German,
Latin and Greek were taught; in 1915, Greek was excluded from the curriculum and two modern
foreign languages were offered: French and English or German; in 1942, French, English and
Spanish were taught, besides Latin and Greek. However, in 1961, foreign languages became optional
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

subjects, which resulted in the gradual decrease in the number of foreign languages in the Brazilian
national curriculum (Donnini, Platero, and Weigel 2010, 4).
In 1971, several liberal educational projects were established by the national educational reform
(Brasil 1971), which was promoted by the military dictatorial government (1964–1985) and supported
by the United States (cf.: Mello 2002, 121). Although the foreign language to be taught in Brazilian
regular schools was not explicitly specified in the 1971 educational reform,
[a]fter 1971, second language instruction became focused on the acquisition of English because this language
was considered relevant for an accurate reading of technical books that were considered important to vocational
programs. Especially during the 1970s, students were told that to succeed professionally they should know
English. (Moraes 1996, 4, 5)

Besides restricting the teaching of foreign languages to the teaching of English, the 1971 educational
reform (Brasil 1971) also reduced the number of foreign language classes in regular schools. Accord-
ing to the discursive analysis of foreign language policies in Brazil carried out by Souza (2005, 171),
this event led to ‘the emptying of institutional English’, which paved the way for the implementation
and expansion of language schools – predominantly English language schools – by the private sector.
Thus, by reducing the number of foreign language classes in Brazilian regular schools, the
language policies established by the 1971 educational reform (Brasil 1971) led to ‘the constitution
of a social memory which [ … ] established a new meaning of foreign languages in public schools’
(Souza 2005, 171): this new meaning was labeled ‘public school English’, which evokes represen-
tations of unsuccessful and devaluing English language teaching/learning practices in public
regular schools. On the other hand, meanings connected to ‘private language school English’
became more and more noticeable, evoking representations of successful and legitimate English
language teaching/learning practices in private language schools.
In this bifurcation of meaning, there is, on the one hand, the linguistic market English language [ … ]. This is the
language which is increasingly sought, studied and learnt in private English language schools, which proliferate in
national and international franchises – a fundamental element in the process of worldwide economic liberaliza-
tion. On the other hand, there is public school English, progressively reduced to the emptiness of inefficacy, of
time-wasting practices [ … ]. (Souza 2005, 172–173, my translation).

The discursive disjunction ‘private language school English’/‘public school English’ has played an
important role in producing a social memory of English language teaching and learning practices.
Some examples of the construction of this social memory and its complexities are found in recent
research on the issue, which investigated the discursive processes and effects related to represen-
tations whose meanings are likewise connected to the discursive disjunction analyzed by Souza
(2005).
Baghin-Spinelli (2002) analyzed identity processes experienced by subjects in English teaching
education programs in Brazilian universities, Erlacher (2009) problematized the imaginary of
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 5

devaluation of English teaching in state schools, and Silva (2010) investigated state school students’
representations of English learning. Although they focused on different research objects, those
researchers found that Brazilian state schools are predominantly seen as institutions where teach-
ing/learning English is not possible or not successful. Based on these findings, I argue that such
images have historically delegitimized English teaching and learning practices in public schools
and, consequently, have reinforced the notion that private language schools are the only institutions
where English teaching is really provided and where English learning is genuinely accomplished.
These dichotomous meanings associated to English language teaching/learning practices were
also affected by the educational policies established by Brazilian government after the dictatorial
period. The educational reform of 1996 (Brasil 1996) established that the teaching of foreign
languages should be mandatory from the fifth grade. Conversely, it stated that foreign language pro-
vision would depend on the possibilities of each school (i.e. the school could provide it or not). In this
way, the meanings of English language teaching in the public educational system became
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

[ … ] diffused between the guaranteed right and the pre-existent conditions of each school, sliding from foreign
language teaching will be mandatory to foreign language teaching will be offered under the possibilities of
each school institution. This sliding neutralizes the meaning of obligation. (Garcia 2011, 48, authors’ emphasis is
in bold, my translation).

The meaning-making processes described and interpreted by Garcia (2011) demonstrate that English
language teaching was not prioritized by the educational reform of 1996 (Brasil 1996). This fact has
inadvertently promoted the dissemination of meanings connected to the ‘public school English’/
‘private language school English’ discursive disjunction which emerged from the 1971 educational
reform (Brasil 1971), according to Souza (2005), as this paper previously discussed.
That discursive disjunction was reinforced by Brazilian democratic governments (from 1985 until
present), which intensified the implementation of neoliberal economic and educational policies in
the country (Souza 2005, 179). The combination of these factors – the discursive disjunction of mean-
ings of English language teaching and the implementation of neoliberal policies – caused the
number of private English language schools to increase exponentially in Brazil since the end of
the 1980s.
Similarly, the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual schools is connected to these policies.
Nevertheless, other political and historical issues to be discussed in the following section also
played an important role in the institutionalization and dissemination of those schools in the Brazilian
educational system.

The emergence of bilingual schools: globalizing circumstances and political

entailments
The issues previously discussed in this paper – designations of the concept of prestige bilingualism
and the implementation of language policies in the Brazilian educational system – have to be con-
sidered in relation to other historical and social constraints underlying the emergence of bilingual
education discourse in Brazil.
Bearing this in mind, this section explores how complex ‘globalizing circumstances’ (McCarthy and
Kenway 2014), combined with also complex local political entailments, have conditioned the emer-
gence of bilingual education in Brazil and its discursivization. The notion of ‘globalizing circum-
stances’ implies a more dynamic view of globalization and its impacts on education, considering
‘newly constructed intersections between the global knowledge economy, neoliberal policies and
practices, and the ways in which differentially positioned groups in differentially positioned
nations are able and, in some cases, explicitly willing to connect with these externalities’ (Weis
2014, 310).
Hence, one of the most important globalizing circumstances to be explored in the Brazilian
context is the immigration of North Americans to Brazil after the American Civil War by the end of
 6 L. FORTES

the nineteenth century. According to Gussi (1996, 90, 1), most Americans who immigrated to Brazil at
that time wished to maintain their protestant religion. At first, teaching was held informally, but later
on they improved their educational provisions by founding the first protestant schools in the country.
In 1869 the International School was founded by the Presbyterians in Campinas (a town in the
state of Sao Paulo), and, in 1881, the Piracicabano School was founded by the Methodists in Piraci-
caba (another town in the state of Sao Paulo). At first, these schools were intended to cater for local
immigrant communities, but, later on, many Brazilians started attending these schools, especially the
local elites, since they were attracted by ‘the values that permeated their educational proposal [and
were] identified [by Brazilians] as American values, [which] were seen as liberal and progressive’
(Gussi 1996, 90, 1, my translation ). Since then, many other international schools were founded in
Brazil.
In her study of bilingual and international schools in Brazil, Selma Moura (2009, 57) listed 34 inter-
national schools: 16 in São Paulo, 5 in Rio de Janeiro, 1 in Minas Gerais, 3 in Paraná, 1 in Rio Grande do
Sul, 2 in Brasília, 2 in Bahia, 1 in Pernambuco, 1 in Pará, 1 in Amazonas and 1 in Sergipe. Out of these
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

34 schools, 22 provide English as the main language of instruction. The list of international schools
compiled by Moura (2009) is certainly not enough to understand all the historical complexities
encompassed by the implementation of those schools in Brazil. The list is restricted to Moura’s
data collection and, therefore, depicts a partial representation of a reality framed by the research
limitations.
However, it is a meaningful source of information for our discussion, since, according to the data
collected by the researcher, most English international schools in Brazil were founded between 1956
and 1961. Not coincidentally, this was the period when Brazil was governed by president Juscelino
Kubitschek (1902–1976), whose slogan ‘Fifty years of progress in five years of government’ rep-
resented the emphasis given to economic development in his political agenda determined mainly
by the ‘Plano de Metas’ (Goals Plan) policies. During his presidency, the Brazilian market started
opening to foreign capital – at the cost of very high foreign loans – and many multinational compa-
nies entered the country (cf.: Campos 2007).
[ … ] in the first half of the 1950’s, Europe did not represent an economic concern to the North-American govern-
ment and big companies anymore. After the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine and the Korean War, ‘[ … ] North-
American capitalism needed to find new expansion boundaries or to deepen its development in areas where it
was already installed.’ (Ianni 1979, 143). In this context, according to the author, the Goals Plan was historically
inserted in the same logics of the Truman Doctrine, which postulated that the investment of private capitals
in underdeveloped countries, as well as commercial exchange would be beneficial to the USA – this is one of
the main reasons why the Goals Plan became feasible. (Campos 2007, 86, my translation)

Discursivities of capitalist development, economic progress and international relations traversed the
political and economic events which were put into practice during Juscelino Kubitschek’s adminis-
tration, marking the beginning of intense processes of internationalization in Brazil. Thus, the emer-
gence of English international schools cannot be seen as isolated from these historical and political
circumstances.
Although the emergence of international schools is chronologically distinguished from the emer-
gence of bilingual schools in Brazil, the economic and political conditions embedded in the former
have reverberated discursively in the institutionalization of bilingual education in Brazil from the
1990s onwards. Internationalization processes that once constituted the conditions underlying the
emergence of international schools – which catered mainly for English-speaking immigrants in
Brazil, focusing on a monolingual curriculum – started being re-signified by discourses of globaliza-
tion. Such discourses became widely disseminated and paved the way for the emergence of Portu-
guese-English bilingual schools, which, differently from international schools, aimed at promoting a
‘globalized’ educational provision through a bilingual curriculum.
According to Corredato (2010), David (2007), Fávaro (2009),Garcia (2011),Mello (2002) and Moura
(2009), most Portuguese-English bilingual schools were established in Brazil from the 1990s onwards
and their curricula are based on total early immersion programs, that is, students enter the program
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 7

at 4–5 years old and study in English for 100% of the time for the first two or three years of schooling;
English instruction time is reduced to 80% after two or three years and to 50% after three or four
more years of schooling. Although the Total Early Immersion Program has been adopted predomi-
nantly by English-Portuguese bilingual schools in Brazil, it should be borne in mind that, depending
on the practices adopted by each school, their programs can vary greatly.4 The Total Early Immersion
Program still constitutes the core model underlying curriculum design in these schools, though.
In 2007, there were 145 bilingual schools in Brazil and this number increased to 187 in 2010, which
means that there has been an increase of almost 30% in the number of schools in three years (Garcia
2011, 24). These figures were published by O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper on 22 January 2010,
based on information provided by the OEBi (Organization of Bilingual Schools of the State of Sao
Paulo). Since not all of these schools are officially registered as ‘bilingual’ in MEC (Ministry of Edu-
cation of Brazil), there are not accurate statistics concerning this issue. Different figures also
appear in the data provided by academic research on the topic (cf.: Moura 2009; Corredato 2010,
for instance).
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

Although the accuracy of these numbers is not relevant to my study, the fact that there has been a
considerable increase in the number of these schools in Brazil plays an important role in my analysis
of the modes by which this kind of educational provision is being discursivized in the Brazilian
context.
Meanings of bilingualism promoted by this kind of schooling in Brazil became circumscribed by
discursivities of globalization, as demonstrated in the following excerpt from a legal text that auth-
orized the opening of bilingual preschools in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 2007:
The desire for bilingual schools emerges with globalization, in an increasingly dynamic and borderless world,
because they are seen as institutions which are suitable to educate citizens from the world and to the world.
Such schools argue that they enable the learner to experience other cultures and to acquire knowledge of
other languages. (Rio de Janeiro 2007, my translation)

It is noticeable that, although the legal text refers to the specific issue of the official authorization
required by bilingual preschools in Rio de Janeiro, this excerpt illustrates the effect of generalization
produced by traces of indetermination of its linguistic materiality. Such effect of generalization pro-
duces the illusion of evidence between ‘the desire for bilingual schools’ and ‘globalization’, as if one
were the corollary of the other and as if this desire ‘naturally’ belonged to all Brazilians, without
distinction.
Similar discursivities of globalization identified with bilingual education were also detected in
several institutional texts published on Portuguese-English bilingual schools’ websites. Just by way
of illustration, I selected an excerpt of one of those texts:
Bilingual education also provides children with the opportunity to be in contact with different cultures and to per-
ceive the world in a more comprehensive and enriching way. Besides, it contributes to the development of chil-
dren’s self-confidence and integration skills to a globalized world. (my translation).5

The phrases ‘globalization’, ‘increasingly dynamic and borderless world’, ‘globalized world’ and ‘citi-
zens from the world and to the world’ are evoked as naturally pertaining to – and demanding – bilin-
gual education schooling contexts.
The identification of bilingual education with discourses of globalization cannot be seen as a
‘natural’ phenomenon, but as discursively produced by ideological formations of market society,
which regulate relations of power among different languages. In this way, indefinite phrases such
as ‘other cultures’, ‘other languages’ and ‘different cultures’ that regularly appear in the selected
excerpts reiterate the signifier ‘English’, although it is not explicitly mentioned. Such an effect of inde-
finiteness can be interpreted as connected to discourses of multilingualism produced by the market
society. Although these discourses produce meanings that evoke imaginaries of language diversity,
they homogenize relations among languages and silence the political issues (Orlandi 2007) that con-
stitute them within historical and social conditions.
 8 L. FORTES

In the case of Portuguese-English bilingual education discourses in Brazil, meanings of English

language teaching/learning – constituted by specific historical and political conditions which were
previously discussed in this paper – are silenced and homogenized by the effect of indefiniteness
in linguistic materiality (e.g.: ‘other languages’). At the same time, though, they are highly determined,
discursively speaking, by meanings of English as an ‘international’, ‘global’ language (cf.: Pennycook
1994; Makoni and Pennycook 2007) which are evoked to construct a place for the new bilingual insti-
tutions and to signify their new schooling practices.
As I attempted to demonstrate by analyzing the emergence of bilingual education discourse in
Brazil, the complexities and contingencies of such schooling practices go far beyond the class and
choice issues depicted by prestige bilingualism concepts which were initially discussed in this
paper. They need to be understood as practices constructed by discursivities of English language
teaching and learning which were historically and politically established. The implementation of
national educational policies, as well as internationalization practices play a crucial role in this discur-
sive process, since they constitute a social memory which operates in the production of legitimizing
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

meanings of Portuguese-English bilingual education in the private sector. The discursive construction
of this legitimacy takes place through the characterization of the bilingual curriculum as a means to
provide access to a better – if not the best – way to learn English.

Conclusion
In order to understand the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual education discourse in Brazil
by the end of the twentieth century, three issues were addressed in this paper: a discursive analysis of
prestige bilingualism concepts; a historical account of language policies through the analysis of the
discursive disjunction ‘public school English’/‘private language school English’; a critical discussion of
the globalizing circumstances constitutive of internationalization practices involving private edu-
cational provision in Brazil, which have consequently paved the way for the emergence of Portu-
guese-English bilingual schools in the country.
By questioning the very designations under which new modes of language production are at
stake, I have attempted to understand the specific conditions of production of hegemonic discursiv-
ities that have made certain meanings of bilingualism more ‘true’ – more believable, more accepted,
more legitimate – than others. Or, to reword Foucault (1972)’s question, adapting it to the specific
object of this paper: how is it that these particular enonces on bilingualism appeared rather than
others? In this way, since historicity is constitutive of signification processes, the spread of the so-
called ‘bilingual schools’ in Brazil was interpreted as connected to historical and social constraints
that have conditioned, shaped, signified this event and established the (im)possibility of the emer-
gence of certain enonces and not others.
The understanding of this historicity has contributed to the outlining of meanings of English
language teaching in Brazil which were established by specific language policies that have eventually
affected the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual schools in the country. Thus, I demonstrated
how the discursive disjunction ‘public school English’ and ‘private language school English’ (Souza
2005) functions metonymically to evoke English language teaching/learning practices which are con-
stituted by specific historical and political conditions. It is important to highlight the fact that these
are not the only meanings produced by these policies, but that they are the predominant ones. For
that reason, they have played an important role in the processes of institutionalization of the so-
called bilingual schools in Brazil.
The implementation of these language policies in the Brazilian educational context were inter-
preted as emerging from and interacting with globalizing circumstances embedded in internationa-
lization practices connected to private educational provision. Since English is the language
predominantly chosen by Brazilian bilingual schools, I argued, the relationship between English
and these discourses of internationalization cannot be taken for granted. As Pennycook (1994, 38)
states, ‘rather than assuming that “the world”, “global”, or “international” are unproblematic
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 9

constructs, I believe we need to develop careful understandings of how culture, language and dis-
course operate within global relations of power’. Thus, relations of power cannot be seen as restricted
to actions affecting subjects solely, but, rather, as constitutive of languages themselves, as well as of
their imaginaries, their political and ideological constructs. Therefore, the emergence of Portuguese-
English bilingual education (discourse) in Brazil cannot be fully understood unless these issues are
taken into account.

Notes
1. Originally published in 1988 in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg.
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 633–650.
2. According to Williams (1999, 5), ‘the English term ‘statement’ does not correspond to the French term énoncé, which
relates to the process of “enonciation” or the production of a statement’. Considering this, Williams proposes the term
‘enonce’ instead, which I decided to adopt here in order to ensure that the foucauldian term will not be
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

misinterpreted.
3. ‘The sliding, the failure and the ambiguity are constitutive of language’ (Pêcheux 1982, 38 cited in Williams 1999, 142)
4. This heterogeneity makes some schools reinforce their identity as ‘real bilingual’, mainly when it comes to contrasting
their legitimacy against schools which adopt intensification programs and identify themselves as ‘bilingual’. I have
been observing this tendency in the institutional discourse produced by some schools on their websites, as well
as by coordinators and teachers interviewed for this research.
5. http://www.littlescool.com/educacao_bilingue.php. Accessed on 9 April 2015.

Acknowledgements
Most reflections presented in this paper profited from a research period I spent in 2014 at University of Technology,
Sydney (UTS) as a visiting doctoral research student under supervision of Professor Marisa Grigoletto (University of
São Paulo) and co-supervision of Professor Alastair Pennycook (UTS). Professor Jacqueline Widin (UTS) has also contrib-
uted substantially to understanding some of the issues discussed in this paper.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work was supported by CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil, under Grant 3760/14–6; and Fapesp, São
Paulo Research Foundation, under Grant 2012/21924-3.

References
Baghin-Spinelli, Débora Cristina Mantelli. 2002. Ser professor (brasileiro) de línguainglesa: um estudo dos processos
identitários nas práticas de ensino. Instituto de EstudosLinguísticos. Campinas: Tese de Doutorado. Unicamp.
Baker, Colin. 2011. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 5th ed. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters.
Bialystok, Ellen. 2001. Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy, and Cognition. Cambridge, UK, New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Brasil. 1971. “Lei de Diretrizes e Bases do 1° e 2° graus. Lei n. 5.692, de 11 de agosto de 1971. Fixa as diretrizes e bases para
o ensino de 1° e 2° graus.” In. Brasília, DF.
Brasil. 1996. “Lei de Diretrizes e Bases. Lei N° 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996. Estabelece as diretrizes e bases da
educaçãonacional.” In. Brasília, DF.
Campos, Márcia Aparecida Ferreira. 2007. A políticaeconômica do governoKubitschek (1956–1961) : o discursoemação.
Rio Grande do Sul: Dissertação de Mestrado. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Faculdade de
CiênciasEconômicas. Programa de Pós-GraduaçãoemEconomia.
Corredato, V. D. 2010. O EnsinoBilíngueem São Paulo: práticas de imersãoem um contextomonolíngue. São Paulo:
Anhanguera Educacional.
Cummins, Jim, and Merrill Swain. 1986. Bilingualism in Education: Aspects of Theory, Research and Practice, Applied
Linguistics and Language Study. London: Longman.
 10 L. FORTES

David, A. M. F. 2007. As concepções de ensino-aprendizagem do projetopolítico-pedagógico de umaescola de

educaçãobilíngue. São Paulo: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo.
De Mejía, Anne-Marie. 2002. Power, prestige, and bilingualism: international perspectives on elite bilingual education.
Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters.
Donnini, Livia, Luciana Platero, and Adriana Weigel. 2010. Ensino de línguainglesa. InColeção Ideiasem Ação, edited by
Anna Maria Pessoa de Carvalho. São Paulo: Cengage Learning.
Erlacher, A. C. 2009. Entre o herói e a vítima: sobre a responsabilidade do professor no/peloensino de
línguainglesanaescolapública. Dissertação de Mestrado. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas.
Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo.
Fávaro, F. M. 2009. A educação infantile bilíngue (português/inglês) nacidade de São Paulo e a formação dos profissionais da
área: um estudo de caso. São Paulo: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo.
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.
Garcia, Bianca R. V. 2011. Quantomaiscedomelhor (?): umaanálisediscursiva do ensino de inglêsparacrianças: Dissertação
de Mestrado. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e CiênciasHumanas. Universidade de São Paulo.
García, Ofelia, and Hugo Baetens Beardsmore. 2008. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Pub.
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 12:57 15 February 2016

Grosjean, François. 1982. Life with two Languages: an Introduction to Bilingualism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Guimarães, Eduardo. 2002. “Enunciação e acontecimento.” In Semântica do Acontecimento, edited by Eduardo Guimarães,
11–31. Campinas: Pontes.
Gussi, Alcides Fernando. 1996. “Identidades no contextotransnacional : lembranças e esquecimentos de serbrasileiro,
norte-americano e confederado de Santa Barbara d’Oeste e Americana.” Unicamp.
Hamers, Josiane F., and Michel Blanc. 2000. Bilinguality and Bilingualism. 2nd ed. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Heller, Monica. 2007. Bilingualism: A Social Approach, Palgrave Advances. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Makoni, Sinfree, and Alastair Pennycook. 2007. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
McCarthy, Cameron, and Jane Kenway. 2014. “Introduction: Understanding the Re-articulations of Privilege over Time and
Space.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 12 (2): 165–176. doi:10.1080/14767724.2014.893188
Mello, Heloisa Augusta Brito de. 2002. “O português é umaalavancaparaqueelespossamdesenvolver o inglês”: eventos de
ensino-aprendizagememumasala de aula de ESL de uma“escolabilíngue”. Tese de doutorado. Unicamp.
Moraes, Marcia. 1996. Bilingual Education: A Dialogue with the Bakhtin Circle. New York: State University Press.
Moura, Selma de Assis. 2009. Com quantaslínguas se faz um país? Concepções e práticas de ensinoemumasala de
aulanaeducaçãobilíngue. São Paulo: Dissertação de Mestrado. Faculdade de Educação. Universidade de São Paulo.
Orlandi, Eni Puccinelli. 2007. Políticalinguística no Brasil. Campinas: Pontes.
Pêcheux, Michel. 1997. “Ler o arquivohoje.” In Gestos de leitura : da história no discurso. 3ª ed, edited by Eni Puccinelli
Orlandi, 49–59. Campinas, SP: Editora da Unicamp.
Pêcheux, Michel. 2014. “Discourse: structure or event?” In Lacan, discourse, event: new psychoanalytic approaches to
textual indeterminacy, edited by Ian Parker and David Pavón Cuéllar, 77–98. New York: Routledge.
Pennycook, Alastair. 1994. The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language, Language in Social Life Series.
Harlow, Essex, England, New York: Longman.
Pennycook, Alastair. 2001. Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum.
Pennycook, Alastair. 2010. Language as a Local Practice. 1st ed. New York, NY: Routledge.
Rio_de_Janeiro. Parecer CME n°. 01/2007. “A presenta considerações sobre a viabilidade de autorização de
escolasbilíngues de Educação Infantil.” Conselho Municipal de Educação. Accessed 16 January 2012. http://www.
ipol.org.br/imprimir.php?cod=484
Romaine, Suzanne. 1989. Bilingualism. Oxford, New York: B. Blackwell.
Silva, Andreia Cristina Alves de Oliveira. 2010. Representações do aprenderinglês no Ensino Fundamental e Médio. São
Paulo: Dissertação de Mestrado. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas. Universidade de São Paulo.
Souza, Sérgio Augusto Freirede. 2005. O movimento de sentidossobre as línguasestrangeiras no Brasil: discurso, história e
educação. Campinas: Tese de Doutorado. IEL- Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem. Unicamp.
Uyeno, Elzira Yoko, and Juliana Santana Cavallari. (ed.) 2011. Bilinguismos : subjetivação e identificações nas/pelas línguas
maternas e estrangeiras. Campinas: Pontes.
Weis, Lois. 2014. “A Comment on Class Productions in Elite Secondary Schools in Twenty-First-Century Global Context.”
Globalisation, Societies and Education 12 (2): 309–320. doi:10.1080/14767724.2014.899130.
Williams, Glyn. 1999. French Discourse Analysis: The Method of Post-Structuralism. London, New York: Routledge.