A CATEGORIA DE GÊNERO NAS GRAMÁTICAS DE LÍNGUA PORTUGUESA PUBLICADAS NO BRASIL. UM EXCURSO HISTÓRICO

Although gender is now seen mainly, at least in public debate, as a social construct (and it is no coincidence that, in order to account for the relevance of gender in defining individual and collective identity, there is frequent reference to “social gender”), gender issues continue to have an increasing impact on the notion of gender understood as a grammatical category, whose unexpected revival in current linguistic studies has much to do with the new and desired centrality of women in contemporary society. Based on this premise, this article aims to reconstruct the treatment given to gender in Portuguese language grammars published in Brazil between the end of the 19th century and the end of the 20th century, with the aim of verifying whether, over this period, the social evolution of the country, in terms of the role played by women in public life and in the labor market, has been accompanied by a renewed metalinguistic awareness of the complexity of this category.