Language policies in Angola

the silencing of national languages

Abstract

This article proposes to reflect on the linguistic policies implemented in Angola that encouraged the silencing of national languages, based on the analysis of actions implemented during the period of Portuguese colonization, especially in the mid-20th century, and in the country's post-independence period, materialized in documents officers. Thus, the present work falls within the field of Language Policies, in Severo’s terms (2013), and discusses linguistic colonization, as proposed by Mariani (2003, 2004, 2011). In the 20th century, Portuguese-speaking colonizers used the policy of the Indigenous Statute and Salazar’s assimilationist policy, analyzed in the present work, as tools that had the purpose of hegemonizing the Portuguese language and devaluing the different Angolan national languages. Post-independence, curricular reforms followed the same colonialist perspective. Considering the issues analyzed, it was concluded that language policies, even post-independence, the ideological parameters of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the one people, one nation project, school education implemented in Angolan territory would have provoked and motivated the attempt to devalue linguistic and cultural diversity in and outside school contexts, thus placing Angolan national languages ​​in an inferior and marginalized place.