The emergence of bilingual education discourse in Brazil: bilingualisms, language policies, and globalizing circumstances

This paper discusses the social and political implications of the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual education discourse in Brazil, which has been widely disseminated since the 1990s. Initially, a discursive analysis of prestige bilingualism concepts will be presented. Second, the issue of language policies will be addressed through the analysis of the discursive disjunction public school English'/private language school English'. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the globalizing 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.