Italian at Public Schools: Historical Conflicts in the State of Santa Catarina

Abstract

This paper focuses on the teaching of Italian language in public schools in some cities of the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil by framing it into the context of Brazilian linguistic diversity. In the last decades, cities founded by Italian immigrants that arrived in Brazil during the XIX century promulgated laws that assured the inclusion of the Italian language in the curriculum of their public school system, even though the majority of the immigrants spoke Italian dialects. The article, then, besides dealing with the linguistic repertoire of the immigrants, shall also try to analyze the linguistic oppression that those immigrants were subjected to during the Estado Novo period of Brazilian politics, seeking to access the consequences of that oppression for the new generations. The chief aim of the paper is, therefore, to problematize the relationship between linguistic oppression and prejudices still in place regarding the use of Italian dialects, trying to put into question the validity of the teaching of standardized Italian in communities formed mainly by dialectophones.