Oxford Handbook of the Portuguese Language

This handbook brings together leading experts in the field to provide a comprehensive overview of the principal historical and contemporary aspects of the Portuguese language from a wide range of perspectives. The first part of the volume explores the main structural characteristics of Portuguese, featuring extensive cross-dialectal comparisons, while the second offers multiple analyses of the language from different theoretical traditions. The chapters in Part III examine the main diachronic developments in Portuguese, introduce the historical, geographical, and social aspects of the origins and expansions of the language, and provide the main features of each of the eight national varieties. Part IV highlights the crucial role that language contact has played in shaping many Portuguese varieties across the world, while Part V investigates the acquisition and teaching of Portuguese. In the final part the focus shifts to how the language is perceived by society: chapters discuss language attitudes, perceptions, and ideologies, as well as efforts to standardize Portuguese; the final chapter explores recent proposals to counter linguistic discrimination and foster linguistic respect. The Oxford Handbook of the Portuguese Language will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students as well as established scholars, whether they are specialists in Portuguese linguistics or researchers in a related field looking to learn more about the language.

Ana M. Carvalho is Professor of Linguistics and Sociolinguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona. She specializes in situations of language contact in contexts of societal bilingualism in border areas. In this field, she has explored issues related to language variation and change with a special focus on the permeability of variable grammars in contact. Livia Oushiro is Professor in the Linguistics department at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Her research focuses on the interplay between variation and group identity in Brazil, including analyses of lectal cohesion, sociolinguistic perception, and second dialect acquisition in the speech of migrants, evaluating the effect of social variables on their speech and their role in patterns of urban language change.