The official languages of Mercosur in high-school educational materials in Argentina and Brazil: a (failed) regional meeting
Since the creation of Mercosur, regional documents and national laws of Brazil and Argentina have highlighted the importance of teaching the official languages of this organization as foreign languages in order to consolidate the regional bond. However, representations that result from different linguistic ideologies have made this bond invisible. Based on a glotopolitical perspective, we confront the Portuguese and Spanish educational materials that have been used in the foreign language classes in argentinian and brazilian schools, respectively, during the period 2003-2015. We can conclude that, while there was an incipient visibility of the region, the sociolinguistic representations did not emphasize the language status of the regional integration, but rather reinforced other ideologies: Spanish as an heterogeneous language of the Spanish speaking world and Portuguese either associated with Brazil, as an isolated territory of the region, or with the language of lusophone countries.
Key words: sociolinguistic representations - educational materials - Spanish in Brazil - portuguese in Argentina