| As a fundamental component of identity, language plays a key role in the way humans understand themselves and their environments. Language contact through the process of colonization complexifies the role of language as it relates to the relationship between the individual and society. Having endured 500 years of Portuguese colonization, the Republic of Cape-Verde is today experiencing a state of diglossia instituted through language policies that have historically privileged the colonizer language.; In an effort to move beyond structural theories of domination, this seven-month ethnographic study utilized discourse analysis as a methodological tool in examining the intersection between language, class and racial identity as it manifested itself both in and out of the educational sphere. The study makes use of focus group interviews, life history interviews, archival research and classroom observations. |
