LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES AND THE INSTITUTION OF RACIAL HIERARCHIES

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the relationship between linguistic ideologies and the institutionalization of racial hierarchies at Modernity, by focusing specifically on their linguistic forms commonly used in Brazil. For this, I assume that certain ways of speaking about language in general andthe Portuguese language in Brazil in particular shape the racialized individuals we are in the present configuration of the Modern/colonial world system. Modern linguistic ideologies and their connections to the constitution and maintenance of racial hierarchies are discussed in three main forms, all of them rarefied by rationalization mechanisms. The forms discussed are 1) the ideology of variable homogeneity, a regulation of speech, whose connection with racial hierarchies is rarefied by the categories “class” and “region”; 2) the ideology of clarity, a regulation of discursive genres, whose connection with racial hierarchies is rarefied by the categories “reason” and “argumentation”; and 3) the ideology of competence, a regulation of the legitimacy of knowledge and bodies, whose connection with racial hierarchies is rarefied by the categories “education” and “culture”. After discussing these ideologies, I conclude that the metapragmatic mechanisms that constitute and make them work may be the contradictory conditions of their fighting.