Gestão das línguas no século XXI: para uma introdução à política linguística exterior

The objective of this work is to stimulate a debate about the idea of a possible foreign language policy. It seeks to do so from an overview of the structural changes of recent decades - those affecting the economy, information and communication technologies, geopolitics and identities - in order to draw attention to the renewed importance and the role that the language management issues are assuming in this new context. Considering the foreign language policy a theoretical and practical essential tool for the management of language in a globalized world, the focus of the discussion rests on four main aspects: the origins of the notion of foreign language policy; the relationship with the foreign policy of the State; its effectiveness through the intervention on corpus, status and acquisition of the language; and the possibility of their formulation by agents other than the State