ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical account of the establishment of a Ukrainian community in the municipality of Prudentopolis, from the late 19th century onwards. It details the challenges faced by the immigrants in the early years of settlement and it points to the key role of religious institutions, particularly the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, in community development. The chapter traces three sociolinguistic developments: the emergence of a local spoken variety of Ukrainian; the cultivation of standard Ukrainian, including school and religious literacies; and the imposition of Portuguese by the Brazilian State and the prohibition of the teaching of immigrant languages during the years of the Estado Novo. It focuses on the ways in which the use of different language and literacy resources is bound up with the construction of different identities and social networks, and on the ways in which the standard variety of Ukrainian and the use of Cyrillic alphabet are represented as particularly valuable forms of cultural capital.
