CLIL in Brazil: Revisiting CLIL Through Critical Lens

In Brazil, as in other parts of the world, English has been commodified by the modern English language teaching industry (Heller in Ann Rev Anthropol 39:101–114, 2010). In our understanding, the aim of language education, as addressed by the field of critical and transgressive Applied Linguistics (Pennycook in Por uma lingüística aplicada indisciplinar. Parábola, pp. 67–84, 2006; Rajagopalan in Por uma lingüística crítica: Linguagem, identidade e a questão ética. Parábola, 2003), is not only the teaching of the additional language, but also and most importantly, the promotion of a type of education engaged in the broadening of the students’ perspectives and committed to challenging the coloniality that structures our society. We advocate for linguistic education that subverts monoglossic and monocultural perspectives and, therefore, do not conceive the work with culture simply as the contact with other traditions and values, without questioning inequalities and oppression (Liberali and Megale in Educação bilíngue: Como fazer? Fundação Santillana, 2021). In the Brazilian English language teaching industry, commercially published textbooks have greatly incorporated thematic units that respond to content and language integrated learning (CLIL). In this chapter, we analyse nine textbooks in which CLIL is claimed to be the methodological basis and understand the concept of culture adopted and if the intercultural learning, which is one of the four defining Cs in CLIL, is approached through a decolonial and critical perspective (Candau in Multiculturalismo: Diferenças culturais e práticas pedagógicas, Vozes, 2008; Liberali and Megale in Educação bilíngue: Como fazer? Fundação Santillana, 2021; Walsh, 2016).