Os (des)caminhos do processo de constituição da norma-padrão no Brasil

In this article, we aim to revisit, based on the principle of contextualization (Koerner, 2014 [1995]) and the concept of moderate historicism (Batista, 2020), the climate of opinion in which the establishment of the standard norm in Brazil took place. We will highlight historical and social facts that favored a certain line of understanding regarding the normative paths (and missteps) of the country, from its very genesis. By doing so, we intend to emphasize the importance of considering the intellectual context of an era to better understand the paths through which a topic, such as linguistic norms, was introduced in the country. This requires a sensitive look at the social thought of the Brazilian elite in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who were responsible for adopting a standard norm based on models of the European Portuguese variety. We have found that: (i) The history of debates on language in Brazil is marked by a strong continuity with foreign scientific theories, which, from today's perspective, led to racist practices in society; (ii) To overcome the Brazilian normative imbroglio, it is necessary to rigorously critique the rules of the current standard norm "cleaning up” what is incompatible with our current educated reality.