The Empire of Language: From the Rise of Vernaculars to the Schooling of Portuguese

Abstract

Abstract This article seeks to relate the institutionalization of Portuguese as a school subject to the process of construction of the cultural and linguistic identity of European kingdoms, as well as their imperial expansion, when language began to be imposed on conquered peoples until it became a reason of State, between the 16th and 18th centuries. Thus, based on a comparative analysis of the pre-textual elements of some compendia and legislative pieces of the time, and with support from the educational, linguistic and cultural historiography on the subject, we propose a decolonial periodization of the schooling of the Portuguese language in four phases: 1) Language as a means of identity affirmation of European kingdoms; 2) Portuguese as an object of literacy, conversion and grammatization; 3) Portuguese as an obligatory component of the First Letters; 4) Portuguese Grammar as introductory content to Latin.