The grammarian Celso Cunha

the Portuguese language, “one on diversity”

Abstract

The present incursion into Celso Cunha’s work highlights any tensions that he succeeds in establishing and conciliating in his linguistic-philological works. The incursion follows a notion that, with no conformity or nationalism, emerges from Cunha’s proposal according to which the prominence of “cultured norm” smoothly coexists with the prominence of spoken language. This coexistence is equated in a proposal of action at school level that provides the students constructive experiences toward the apprehension of the “prestigious dialect”, without being required from them the abandonment of the vernacular (and safeguarded the attention toward register adequacy). In this direction, this paper highlights, at its crux, the proposal that the work with grammar at school level should be conducted by the notion that a language is “one in diversity”, given that, scientifically, any natural language is “one”, nevertheless in the necessary plurality of uses (of modes of expression). In Cunha’s perspective, inside this building of conciliated tensions, we all are “tenants of the language”; and given the tasks he suggests for working with the language, it is safe to understand that we ought to be natural “keepers” of this common patrimony.