Foreign Languages in Brazilian Graduate Programs. Glotopolitical Considerations Based on a Survey in a Specific Area and Region

Abstract

In the context of a research about places for foreign languages in Brazilian graduate programs in different Humanities areas, this article presents the results of a survey about which languages are accepted as proficiency evidence in Graduate programs in the Southeast region of the country in the Education area. It is a study on linguistic policies, using the Glotopolitics approach, a perspective which studies both the more or less institutionalized interventions on languages and on the relationships between them, and also the ideological dimension related to these interventions. The language options in 70 officially recognized Graduate programs were surveyed. The quantitative results have shown a political-linguistic podium, in which the English language is clearly in the first position, presenting mandatory conditions in some cases. In second and third places, respectively, Spanish and French have appeared with a significant presence, followed much later by Italian and German. In the qualitative aspect, we have developed reflections that relate the obtained dataset with the ideologies about English as the supposedly only language for knowledge production, with studies that critically discuss the measurements of the presence of languages in scientific publications, especially in Humanities, and within the political and linguistic panorama in South America in recent decades.