Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

Políticas linguísticas em Angola: o silenciamento da língua umbundu e da identidade cultural dos ovimbundos

by Júlio Epalanga Sacalembe

This dissertation proposes to analyze the linguistic policies implemented in Angola that fostered the silencing of the Umbundu language and the cultural identity of the Ovimbundu people, initiated by the Lusitanian colonizers and continued by the Angolan authorities in the post-independence period. This research aims to study the Ovimbundu people, along with their culture and language. Therefore, a survey was carried out of the sociolinguistic reality of Angola prior to the presence of Portuguese speaking colonization, focusing on the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the first people to settle in the territory of Angola, the Khoisan and the Vatwa; The characteristics of the social, ethnic, cultural and linguistic organization of the Angolan population of Bantu origin were also presented, which allowed us to infer that Angola, before Portuguese colonization, was a country cemented by the multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual model. Therefore, it became imperative to discuss the linguistic and cultural situation of Angola during the presence of Portuguese colonization. The colonization process caused ruptures in the linguistic and cultural plan of Angolans and Angolan women. It is known that the Portuguese-speaking colonizers used the indigenous status policy and the assimilationist policy as tools, whose purpose was to hegemonize the Portuguese language and devalue the different Angolan languages. Alongside these issues, the present work falls within the field of language policies, in the terms of Calvet (2007), Rajagopalan (2013), Silva (2013), Spolsky (2016), Severo (2013), among others. The main objective of this work was to discuss the language policies implemented in Angola that encouraged the silencing of national languages and, in particular, the language and culture of the Ovimbundu, based on the analysis of language policies implemented in the period of Portuguese colonization and in the post -independence of Angola, materialized in official documents. To achieve the research objectives, a variety of methodological approaches were adopted, such as content analysis and documentary and bibliographical research. It was concluded that language policies, 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, contributed and motivated the attempt to devalue linguistic and cultural diversity in school contexts and outside of it, thus placing the Umbundu language and the cultural practices of the Ovimbundu in an inferior and marginalized place.