“A world beyond this one”: Sustaining afro-brasilidade through language, ritual, and culture teaching in a northeastern Brazilian school

Abstract

This research advances racioreligious linguistic ideologies as a concept to examine discursive processes whereby language, race, and spirituality become entangled within cultural lenses. It begins by exploring the racialization of Yoruba-inspired (Nagô in Bahia) spiritualities and linguistic/semiotic practices under colonialism and racial slavery. It continues into the modern context with an extended example situated in a northeastern Brazilian school, where Nagô/Yoruba typifies Blackness. The data highlight how interlocutors in this school, working within affirmative racioreligious linguistic ideologies and the values they assign, engage in education as racioreligious identity work to resist racial, religious, and linguistic prejudices, sustain traditional knowledge, and affirm Afro-Brazilianness.