The importance of not being "pluricentric". Theory and praxis of the (desired) internationalisation of Portuguese

ABSTRACT

Over the last few years, the concept of pluricentrism in the Portuguese language has become a kind of truism or apodictic truth, that is, something that, apparently, is so obvious that it does not even need to be demonstrated, to the point that its approaches have ended up gaining idealizing and, at times, simplistic contours. Thus, the aim of this work is to reason about the theoretical relevance of the notion of pluricentricity applied to Portuguese, based not only on the concrete "ontological" and (geo)political implications of the term, but also on the current stage of research, and its possible and desirable didactic and practical projections. Therefore, the methodology used here is qualitative, consisting mainly of bibliographic analysis and comments and reflections based on it. As results, we point out the importance of being careful with academic fads, at the same time that we highlight the need for greater development of certain aspects of teaching Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PLE), investing more, for example, in the construction of Portuguese corpora and especially with a view to the profile of the alloglot learner.