Using lusitanization and creolization as frameworks to analyse historical and contemporary Cape Verde language policy and planning

This chapter analyses the status and spread of Portuguese in Cape Verde, using Lusitanization and Creolization as analytical frameworks. Lusitanization is a colonial and postcolonial political dispositif that led to the spread of Portuguese discourses and institutions in former Portuguese colonies. Lusitanization weaves together slavery, religion, bureaucracy, and race, and establishes Portuguese as a core to these discourses. Creolization is the product of colonial encounters between the Portuguese and Cape Verdeans. Cape Verde played a central role in the Atlantic slave trade, connecting Africa with America, and Angola with Brazil. Sociolinguistically, Lusitanization manifests itself through the production of a form of Portuguese whose origins can be traced back to Christianization; at the same time, Indigenous languages were invented, and old words given new meanings. The interplay between sociolinguistics and history had the effect of racializing Portuguese: mother-tongue Portuguese speakers were assumed to be white, and nationals of Portugal.