I’ll speak English just like an American: overvaluing attitudes toward the foreign language and culture

Résumé

This pape is about overvaluing attitudes toward the English native speaker, his/her culture and language. Under the aegis of Apllied Linguistics, it intends, through some ethnographic data, to draw attention to the fact that when overvaluing attitudes occur, they might bring as consequence learner’s inferiority feelings. Thus, the objective of this paper is to reflect about ideas that hierarchize people, making them feel inferior to other people from hegemonic cultures. This text also brings ideas that intend to make teachers aware about the importance of approaching in classroom issues that affects the English language, such as colonialism, imperialism, globalization and identity.