Introduction: Glocal Languages, the South answering back

Abstract

This book aims to shed light on a particular perspective of the globalness and localness of some “glocal languages” (Portuguese, Spanish, English and Indigenous languages), having Brazil as its locus of enunciation and offering some highlights of language education in higher education here. The concept of “glocal languages” implies claiming for the ownership and the revivification of colonial and colonised languages. The so-called Indigenous languages cease to be perceived as residuals of the past to give way to general awareness of the linguistic, cultural epistemological and ontological value they have in providing us with different world visions. The originally European languages must be regarded as having gained their autonomy and as standing on their own, of which Brazilian Portuguese is a good example. Considering them otherwise, still depending on their European roots and keeping them symbolically connected with colonialism, is a postcolonial perception of “glocalisations” whereas regarding them as linguae francae is putting them at the service of a neo-colonialist understanding of the globalisation of languages. Neither does keeping languages imprisoned in their past, at one end, nor throwing out that burden as if it had never existed, at the other end, offer a consistent solution.