Social representations of English materialized in the use of anglicisms in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the social representations of English materialized in the use of anglicisms in Brazilian Portuguese, drawing on research with fifty-five teacher education students enrolled in a Portuguese–English programme at Universidade Federal Fluminense, a public federal university in south-eastern Brazil. While previous studies have examined anglicisms primarily as lexical borrowings or indicators of globalization, less attention has been paid to their role as discursive practices through which social representations are constructed and negotiated. A mixed-methods design combined a structured questionnaire and semistructured interviews, analysed through the lenses of sociolinguistics, glottopolitics, and translanguaging. The results suggested that English representations did not differ substantially between beginners and seniors, indicating that they were largely shaped outside formal academic contexts. The findings point to three interrelated axes of representation—access to knowledge, social and professional advancement, and the construction of cultural identities—which emerge from participants’ reported practices. Simultaneously, the data highlight the tensions between English as a resource and a potential mechanism of exclusion, reflecting broader inequalities in access to language learning.