Much has been said about the need to promote the integration of communities that live as far as Brazil and East-Timor. This is, for instance, one of the goals of CPLP (the Community of the Countries of Portuguese Language[1]), which aims to foment cooperation among the eight member nations where this language is spoken. In practice, however, does the contact amongst the speakers of Portuguese from different regions of the world substantiate the premise of a shared language and culture, often referred to as “lusophonia”? Negative linguistic attitudes toward different variants of Portuguese are notable not only in the contact between speakers of the same country, in the case of those belonging to different social stratum (e.g., the variants of Portuguese spoken in different regions of the Brazil, Bagno, 1999), but also across countries (e.g., the often cited disputes between speakers of European and Brazilian Portuguese, Rio-Torto, 2022; Silva and Módolo, 2021). Recent migratory movements of Brazilians to Portugal have highlighted longstanding xeno-racist attitudes (Fekete, 2001) and prejudices against the former, rooted both in their lifestyles and appearance, but also in how they speak Portuguese. Cries of “I don’t understand one word you’re saying” or “you need to learn how to speak Portuguese” are commonly attributed to the Portuguese in their public interactions with Brazilians. This paper analyses narratives of Brazilian immigrants recounting experiences with linguistic prejudice and discrimination in Portugal. By analyzing these narratives, we can gain an insight on the most common kinds of interactions where these expressions of linguistic prejudice are more likely to emerge, and in how such views connect to broader, historic, racist, and xenophobic attitudes toward Brazilians.

[1] https://www.cplp.org/id-2604.aspx