In our profession there tend to be various types of personalities, some of which see us as more of a business. Universities make money by selling intellectual growth as a commodity which various "stakeholders" purchase for various prices. I have never subscribed to this commercialized philosophy, and today I had a reminder of why. 

When I was a graduate student instructor someone in a position of authority over me told me that with my "sotaque feio e inútil" I would never find a job. This was, of course, the day after I had successfully made the switch from teaching only Spanish to teaching Portuguese during the academic year, then Spanish in the summer. Perhaps it was my non-nativeness which drove this particular person to continue reminding me of how easy it would be to change accents, "tente, você vai ver!" I'm sure that Bakhtin would have reacted very differently to this situation than Lacan, and that both would have gotten a good laugh out of the whole thing anyway. I eventually learned to, and performed my duties rather well.

Still, when it came to my "lado luso" I found myself at various moments on the defensive, linguistically speaking. When I graduated and took my current position I thought that would end; yet, somehow, periodically I would hear comments such as "how could you teach Portuguese and not sound Brazilian?," or "you cannot build a program speaking an unpopular dialect," and the like. I did my best not to take offense, remembering that not everyone understands the nuances of sociolinguistic politics or rudimentary dialectology. Here I have built a program based on the notion that the language belongs to, and expresses, a world of cultures and perspectives (whether for good or bad I dare not say; some would have it either way - we present ourselves and our students with the difficult questions of who, why, how, and para quê). Olavo Bilac makes a case in his poem on the language:

Última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela,
És, a um tempo, esplendor e sepultura:
Ouro nativo, que na ganga impura
A bruta mina entre os cascalhos vela...

Amote assim, desconhecida e obscura,
Tuba de alto clangor, lira singela,
Que tens o trom e o silvo da procela
E o arrolo da saudade e da ternura!

Amo o teu viço agreste e o teu aroma
De virgens selvas e de oceano largo!
Amo-te, ó rude e doloroso idioma,

Em que da voz materna ouvi: "meu filho!"
E em que Camões chorou, no exílio amargo,
O gênio sem ventura e o amor sem brilho!
(in Perin dos Santos, http://www.infoescola.com/literatura/analise-do-poema-lingua-portuguesa/)

Love and death, tenderness and longing, tears and family ... the universality of the Portuguese language unifies with caring and a bit of resentment, it defies the logic of other languages. The literatures written in Portuguese may not surpass all others, but its prosaic, theatrical, musical, cinematic, scientific, historical, and poetic voices are second-to-none. I see one of my professional duties to be the fomenting of an appreciation for the language, the people who speak it, and all they've suffered for and achieved. (This is not, of course, to say that my "lado castizo" finds no home in my heart; indeed, this will be a topic for another day). For this reason I have begun co-leading an effort to make a wider outreach in this area as part of a larger institutional program.

We cannot dwell in this utopian epistemology for long, though; the reality of misunderstanding and reductiveness can catch us too quickly. Today, when I learned that there are those wanting to reduce the complexities and beauty of this endeavor to one of Public Relations and fundraising with a very specific and limited set of parameters (many of which would simply undo Bilac's ideal of what "A Língua Portuguesa" means), I found myself on the defensive again. Kennedy once said we need to perform great deeds and become greater than our pre-conceived limits, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Selling is easy; educating is hard. Buying into a brand is easy; growth and daring are hard. So, caros amigos e colegas, I ask you to consider which one you choose.

Tenham uma muito boa noite / Pasad unas muy buenas noches / Have a great evening!