Mozambique Language Policies: Controversies and Perspectives

Main Article Content

Ilídio Enoque Alfredo Macaringue

Keywords

Language Policies, Nation-State, Mozambique

Abstract

In this essay we analyze the historical, political-ideological and sociolinguistic context from which Mozambique adopted its linguistic policies, taking into account the linguistic-cultural diversity that characterizes the country and problematizing its effectiveness due to the ambivalences generated around the officialization of European Portuguese without the nationalization and the nationalization of the native languages ??without making them official. In addition, we observe that the logic of what is institutionalized is being subverted by the consuetudinary practice of the uses of language, namely, European Portuguese as the standard in the country is nativized and endogenized to the sociocultural and linguistic ecology concomitant with Mozambicanity, and should therefore be standardized and established as the official and national language of Mozambique. This is due to the fact that the European standard is a hypostasis and less and less related to the sociolinguistic and cultural dynamics in progress. This statement can be verified by means of already consolidated studies of linguists like Firmino (2006) who point to the consolidation of specific characteristics of this other Portuguese language in the areas of lexicon, syntax and semantics

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