ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with comparative research between South American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese and its use in classroom activities. These courses have put together comparison topics which can be sorted into three main categories: the political delimitation of languages, discursivity and linguistic dynamics in its systemic aspects. It is an attempt to argue for an approach to languages in higher education which, using comparative practices in research and in teaching, encourages the questioning of given universalities. This chapter aims at setting, in their heterogeneity and in their conflict relations, the presence of two undoubtedly hegemonic languages in the South American space, by establishing a relation between their historical position in colonization and resistance processes, the discourses that produce some materiality in themselves, and all that approximates and distances them in their dynamics. This chapter deals with a historical and particular view of what is perceived as the world extension of each language, thus promoting a practice in which what tends to be global and what we can consider as local interact and impact each other and themselves.