Map of the worldwide spread of the Portuguese language

Abstract

Many Portuguese language textbooks present a map of the worldwide distribution of the Portuguese language. The teaching materials available on the websites of the Camões Institute for Cooperation and Language and the International Institute of Portuguese Language (IILP) also present this type of map. These world maps reflect the attitudes of their authors and the Portuguese-speaking communities and contribute to the reproduction of these same attitudes among those who deepen their Portuguese language skills. Thus, this text has two objectives: (i) to characterize the attitudes that these teaching materials reflect and promote and (ii) to present suggestions that could result in a more faithful representation of reality. To this end, the world map published on the IILP Blog is analysed, which represents the countries of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries and the autonomous Chinese territory where Portuguese is an official language, with a number assigned to each country and territory that is difficult to identify. Furthermore, this is a world map in which the northern hemisphere is twice the size of the southern hemisphere, Portugal is the country presented in the most detail, the linguistic diversity of the countries that have Portuguese as an official language is ignored, as are the Portuguese-speaking people, mainly from the Brazilian and Portuguese diasporas, who do not live in countries or territories where Portuguese is an official language.