Secretaria de Relações Internacionais | Office of International Relations

“Shades of Decolonial Voices in Linguistics” book cover.

On 12 September 2023, the book “Shades of Decolonial Voices in Linguistics” was published by Multilingual Matters. This is the second volume of the book series Global Forum on Southern Epistemologies, which is concerned primarily with exploring peripheralized ways of framing and conducting language studies in both the Global South and Global North – a concern which is not only epistemological, but also political, educational and social.

The current edition argues that Linguistics as a field of study has been shaped by colonization and needs a critical review. The work was organized by the Director of African Studies at Pennsylvania State University (USA) Sinfree Makoni, in partnership with professor Ashraf Abdelhay from the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (Qatar), the Director of Family Literacy at the National Center for Families Learning (USA) Anna Kaiper-Marquez, the PhD student in the Department of Applied Linguistics, research assistant at the Global Virtual Forum and tutor for the KAUST program at Pennsylvania State University (USA) Višnja Milojičić, and the associate professor at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC) Cristine Severo.

Cristine Gorski Severo, CNPq fellow, associate professor and deputy coordinator of the Graduate Program in Linguistics at UFSC.

According to the UFSC researcher, the book is guided by four key questions: What does decolonization mean?; what does it mean to decolonize linguistics?; why should we decolonize linguistics?; and how is  decolonial linguistics practiced?. She argues that a practical example of the colonization still present is the symbolic erasure of the plural and multilingual dimension in Brazil, in favor of a monolingual imaginary.

Drawing on the importance of this discussion for UFSC and other Brazilian public universities and their internationalization policies, Prof. Severo states that: “it is about thinking of multilingualism as a right, not only a linguistic one, but also a social and political one, which may imply, in the academic sphere, the use of mother tongues and the multilingual dimension as integrating elements in the process of producing, disseminating and appropriating knowledge”.  In addition, “[decolonization in universities] also encompasses the use and valuation of non-hegemonic languages within the scope of what is understood by internationalization”, says the researcher.

The book series is part of Global Forum, an open and politically engaged initiative that holds free, virtual weekly/fortnightly conversations aimed at promoting dialogue and disseminating knowledge from different disciplines committed to the relationship between the Global South and the Global North. The book series is based on the dialogues produced in the forum. To have access to parts of these conversations, visit its official website.

Interview and news article by:
Maria Fernanda Honório
Communication intern at the Office of International Relations (SINTER)
Journalism student at UFSC