El campo de las ciencias y la educación superior entre el monopolio del inglés y el plurilingüismo: elementos para una política del lenguaje en América Latina

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

Trab. linguist. apl.

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2013-12

RESUMO

The field of science and higher education presents a strategic space that clearly reflects some of the problems which spring from the globalisation of English as today's only hyper-central language: from a model of limited plurilingualism based on German, English, and French in the beginning of the XXth century, the field has moved to an almost absolute predominance of English. Today we face a crucial dilemma with potentially irreversible consequences: we can either move from English hegemony to English monopoly which would exclude all other languages from science; or we can advance through a XXIst century with reinvigorated plurilingualism that reinforces the diversity of languages, discourse strategies and cultural models in the strategic field of science and higher education. From a Latin American perspective, we can identify three good reasons to oppose monolingualism and foster Spanish, Portuguese and other languages in the vital spaces of science: the theoretical and epistemological risks monolingualism poses for the creativity of science; the problem of increasing power asymmetries among different linguistic communities of academics through English only; and the negative consequences of Anglophone monolingualism for symmetric international cooperation. This text will analyse the limited nature of studies on language distribution in indexed publication when they are taken as representative of the field as such. Alternatively I propose to conceptualise the space of science and higher education as a sociological and communicational field (Bourdieu) that integrates the spheres of production, circulation, and teaching as a unity and object to study the real use of languages. I will finally outline some elements for a plurilingual model as a basis to formulate integrated policies of language, science and higher education for Latin America.

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