The article presents, from the concepts of Lusotropicalism and Lusophony, the historical process of commoditization of Portuguese language. For doing so, the paper exposes the economic role played by sugar in Brazilian colonial era. After, the text discusses the "sweetened meanings" attributed to the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil as a means of inscribing colonial meanings in the process of constitution of the Brazilianness of language and identity. Finally, it discusses the commercial value attributed to the Portuguese language in contemporary era, pointing to the role played by Brazil in this new order. The conception of language adopted assumes that it is not neutral, but ideologically saturated and, therefore, the values and meanings attributed to language produce effects on language use and its dissemination. The corpus is made of a sample of historical discourses, from different speech genres, on the Portuguese of Brazil.
Portuguese language; Brazilianness; sweetness; sugar; trade