This article debates the social and political implications of the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual education discourse in Brazil, which has been broadly spread since the 1990s. Initially, it proposes a discursive assay of prestige bilingualism concepts. Second, it handles the issue of language policies through the analysis of the discursive disjunction ‘public school English'/‘private language school English’. Then it briefly debates the globalizing circumstances implied in internationalization practices of private educational provision in Brazil underlying the emergence of Portuguese-English bilingual schools in the country. Finally, these three issues will be articulated in order to grasp bilingual education discourse in Brazil as emerging from and interacting with extant discursivities of English language teaching/learning practices which were historically and politically established in the national educational system.