Counter-hegemonic linguistic ideologies and practices in Brazilian indigenous rap

Abstract

"I didn’t enjoy it, because that is foreign music. And I am a nationalist”. This statement was pronounced by the Governor of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the end of the concert of the Indigenous rap group Brô MCs, on the occasion of the opening of the Indigenous Olympic Village in that state some years ago (O Estado de São Paulo, May 21st 2011). The Governor, André Puccinelli, was the only one who did not applaud the group. This anecdote, metapragmatic in itself, also serves here as an important leitmotif for the reflections developed in this work, which is a result of a broader research project which, in one of its fronts, aims at disinventing and reconstituting language conceptions and practices in postcolonial contexts (see Makoni & Pennycook, 2007), particularly Brazilian indigenous populations, which have experienced colonial processes and their contemporary consequences more directly.