Bilingualism/multilingualism as a social phenomenon is still little recognized in the Brazilian scenario, despite it has gotten space in the academy. Usually, Brazil is seen as a monolingual country, where the Brazilian Portuguese is the only language spoken. There are, however, contexts of minority languages (indigenous groups, groups of immigrant, border regions, deaf communities) in which the use of several languages is the rule. In these sociolinguistically complex contexts there are both asymmetric and conflicting relations between the hegemonic language and minority languages, usually stigmatized. This study develops itself from the results of an ethnographic research, focusing the language conflict that is present in a rural school located in a bilingual/multilingual community in a region of German immigration in the south of the country, where, even nowadays, children learn at home the inherited language, which is used in the familiar and social contexts. With a theoretical basis mostly acquired from bilingualism analyzed from a social perspective and from the perspective of the Cultural Studies, the main aim of this article is to problematize the language contact/conflict situation existing in the target region and its interface with identity questions built in the hegemonic discourses. Moreover, it is discussed the way these conflicts emerge in the interactional relations between teachers and among teachers and students within school. The data suggests that the community's bilingualism gets into school, and that the language and identity conflicts become even stronger within the social interactions among the individuals that live together in that space.
social bilingualism; linguistic minorities; language conflict