ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical analysis of the processes of globalization and glocalization as a background for the perception of the concept ‘glocal languages.’ The author undertakes a critical analysis of hegemonic and non-hegemonic globalization and of the various theories supporting the conceptual framework for the notion of glocalization. If glocalization is concerned with global-local contact and if by globalization one means the localizing of a phenomenon in all the senses (including the localizing of globalisms), one needs to be critically aware of the import of one’s locus of enunciation. The perception of ‘global’ and ‘local’ and the need or not for contact and exchange are inseparable from one’s histories and one’s epistemologies. This chapter then contextualizes the idea of ‘glocal languages’ in relation to other theories that have been developed in order to examine language within the perspective of world communication nowadays. Finally, this chapter presents a perspective from the South on linguistic issues, with its locus of enunciation in Brazil, and discusses the concept of glocal language, glocalization and globalization from a southern perspective in the context of decoloniality.
