by Pedro M. Garcez

University of Pennsylvania, USA

CNPq, Brasília, Brazil

A case of corpus cultivation language planning is reported here: the 1990 Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord for the Portuguese-speaking countries, signed by representatives of all seven countries that have Portuguese as their official language. Sociohistorical background is provided about Portuguese standardization and spread, the distribution of the language in the world today, and the development of its spelling norms. Discussion of the Accord and the ensuing debate is carried out through an analysis of the positions taken and of the arguments used by authors in a selection of scholarly and journalistic articles. These arguments are contrasted with those presented by Geerts, van den Broeck and Verdoodt (1977) in their report on a similar case. The author concludes that while most of the debate revolves around issues of linguistic efficiency, the Accord and its proponents are primarily concerned with political and diplomatic efficiency.

"Brasil e Portugal travam uma guerra surda em torno de um idioma que o mundo ignora, mesmo em suas melhores manifestações literárias."

The main concern here is to examine the present state of the Lusophone orthographic quest - the implementation of the 1990 Orthographic Accord that should unify the two official orthographies of Portuguese currently in effect in Brazil and in Portugal. As a speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, I have not attempted to be neutral but have tried to write an unbiased report, in spite of Gundersen's warning that "it is probably impossible for a native writer to be completely unbiased on the language question" (1977:248).

The debate around the Orthographic Accord occurs within a complex context. Below I provide some background on the code it modifies, and on the community of users whose language behavior it aims to influence. The following sections describe the historical development of Portuguese standardization. A sketch of the distribution of the language in the world today offers a glimpse at the socioeconomic features of the nations involved, while a brief history of the development of Portuguese spelling norms locates the 1990 Orthographic Accord across time. In the presentation of the Luso-Brazilian debate, I introduce the different positions held and then I discuss the various types of arguments.

Brazilian sociolinguist Elia (1989) distinguishes five stages of Portuguese geolinguistic spread: Old (Portugal), new (Brazil), very new (the PALOP), lost (Goa, Macao, and East Timor), and dispersed (immigrant communities). The taxonomy points to the diversity of the Lusophone world, disallowing a definition of speech community that would suit all five areas. For the present purposes, the seven countries that have Portuguese as their official language shall be considered as the Portuguese language community.

The status of Portuguese within this community varies tremendously. Elia (1989) adapts a set of language planning concepts as labels to draw distinctions for the status of Portuguese in the different nations: indigenous or transplanted language (i or t), mother language or lingua franca (m or f), official language (l), national language (i.e., spoken throughout the country [n]), and standard language of culture (used in education, mass media, and literature [c]). The table below reproduces Elia's classification, lists the main languages in each country, and offers a glance at the socioeconomic features of the seven Lusophone countries through figures for population (in millions), Gross National Product (in billions of $US), and literacy rate (as percentage of population over 7).

As the table above indicates, having Portuguese as the official language is perhaps the only factor that applies equally to all seven countries. Politically speaking, Brazil looms large, with a population and an economy a number of times bigger than all of the other Lusophone countries combined. Portugal, besides its tradition as the former colonial power and as the country where the language came into being, has a most important economic strength in its EEC membership.

Portugal and Brazil are the only two countries with strong commitments to Portuguese language renovation. They are long established nations with relatively large populations and economies, where Portuguese is universally spoken and widely written and read. This is in sharp contrast with the other five recently independent Lusophone countries, where Portuguese is the only official language of government and education but has limited currency. As peripheral states with minute economies, the PALOP are at a political disadvantage in the debate over the Accord.

It is worth examining the status of Portuguese in the PALOP to understand why they are but concerned observers of the Luso-Brazilian orthographic debate. We can establish two groups of PALOP countries based on two criteria: size of population and economy, and status of Portuguese in relation to other languages. On the one hand, we have the larger mainland countries of Angola and Mozambique, where Portuguese is challenged in most domains by various African languages. On the other hand, there are the tiny island-states of Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe, where Standard Portuguese is challenged by the local creole languages. Guinea-Bissau is a borderline case in terms of size and of the status of Portuguese, since it shares much of the macrosociolinguistic situation of Angola and Mozambique, while also having its own local Creole.

The numbers reported vary, but we can assume that around 25% of the population of Mozambique routinely use the language of the former colonial power, though no more than 1.2% consider it their mother-tongue (Português é... 1993; Passanisi and Wolf 1991; Elia 1989). Passanisi and Wolf present an ethnographic account of what they term "the identity crises" of educated Mozambicans toward their language resources. They conclude that "a combination of national languages and Portuguese is needed as a survival tactic" (1991:33), based on their finding that "being fluent in Portuguese has been and continues to be a primary route to general information about Mozambique, to continued state-supported educational opportunities, and to vocational access" (p. 30).

The situation in Angola might be roughly the same, but there are reasons to believe that Portuguese has a larger currency there, since a sizable group takes it as their mother-tongue. According to Cristóvão, 60% of the residents of the province of Luanda, which includes the capital city, declared Portuguese as their native language in a 1983 census (1988, cited in Elia 1989:32-3). In the hinterland, however, Portuguese has but a marginal role.

This brief sketch of the Lusophone community sheds light on the attitude of the PALOP countries to accept whatever is decided by Brazil and Portugal in respect to the future of the Orthographic Accord. Their position is consistent with Neustupny's (1974) claim that less developed speech communities are concerned with issues of language policy, and not so much with issues of cultivation such as the ones tackled by a spelling unification. PALOP language planners cannot prioritize Portuguese corpus planning when they are still struggling with status planning issues in a scenario of extremely limited economic resources. After all, Portuguese was chosen as the official language because of its advantages as a fully standardized language.

In a report on the opinions of PALOP intellectuals about the Accord (Neves 1991), São Tomé and Príncipe journalist Conceição Lima warns:

Despite the rhetoric implicit in the title of the 1990 Orthographic Accord, i.e. that it is an aspiration of the larger Lusophone world, it is a fact that the PALOP can hardly afford to get involved in this debate. The Accord is therefore a Luso-Brazilian enterprise.

Historians of the Portuguese language agree about the existence of three distinct phases in the development of its spelling norms: a phonetic phase, a pseudo-etymological phase, and a phase of official orthographic reforms (Williams 1938; Cuesta and Luz 1971:335-341, cited in Rui Castro 1987:117; Houaiss 1991).

The influence of classical Latin and Greek during the Renaissance brought a variety of philological spellings. Pinto (1988) describes the work of 17th and 18th century grammarians as extremely concerned with orthographic norms, but yet unable to escape the contradictions of their two masters (i.e., traditional Portuguese phonetic spelling, and the contemporary cult of classic traditions which favored etymological spelling). Houaiss calls this second phase the "pseudo-etymological phase," adding that at this point "spelling becomes more difficult, and pseudo-experts who advocate the use of old-fashioned or mistaken spellings determine the history of words" (1991:11). Bueno (1967) refers to a "mixed norm," regulated by dictionary makers and independent "orthographers," which developed in Brazil as a result of the etymological tendencies active until the 19th century.

The third phase can rightly be called an orthography, since the power of the "experts" and of the law is added to the enforcement of new directions toward a simplified spelling system. As Bueno puts it, Portuguese spelling "developed all the way to 1911 without any [successful] official interference, either from the government or from the Academies" (1967:277). Houaiss (1991) calls this the "simplified phase." More realistically perhaps, the Portuguese grammarians Cuesta and Luz call it "the period of orthographic reforms" (cited in Rui Castro 1987:117).

Like other Romance-speaking countries, Portugal has its own language academy - the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon (ACL) - founded in 1779. The Brazilian Academy of Language and Literature (ABL) was created in 1896. ACL and ABL have been the main institutions dealing with the regulation of Portuguese orthography.

In 1923, diplomatic efforts were started for a Luso-Brazilian dialogue, and the subsequent changes in the Brazilian political scene prompted ABL to sign a minor agreement with ACL in 1931 (Houaiss, in Augusto 1992b; Bueno 1967). Even though the 1931 Agreement was turned into law in both countries, "nobody seems to have taken it very seriously" (Ivo Castro 1987:XI). In Portugal, it did not include items suppressing the silent consonants (see section below). In Brazil, the Agreement was promulgated twice (1931 and 1933), suspended in 1934, and reestablished in 1938 (Castro and Leiria 1987).

This Bilateral Agreement of 1945 is the crux of the present call for the unification. Drafted in Lisbon by representatives from the two Academies, it was promulgated by the Portuguese government after some debate. In Brazil, the outcry against it was such that it was never approved by the legislative body at the time. Apparently the main reason for the negative reaction was the unilateral rule on the use of accents based on European Portuguese pronunciation (Freeman 1965:115; Castro and Leiria 1987:213).

Reunification efforts have periodically been made. In 1967, a group of Portuguese and Brazilian scholars met in vain to draft a project for unification. In another attempt in 1975, a proposal was drawn up but it was short-lived due to the political scenario: Brazil had a rightist military government; Portugal had just gotten rid of its fascist dictatorship through a leftist revolution in 1974. 1975 was also the year the PALOP became independent.

In 1986, representatives of all seven Lusophone countries were called for a meeting at ABL in Rio de Janeiro to reform and unify the orthographic standards of the community. The resulting document - "Analytical Bases of the Simplified Orthography of the Portuguese Language in 1945, Renegotiated in 1975 and Consolidated in 1986" - came to be known as the Orthographic Accord (Rui Castro 1987).

The 1986 Project was polemic in Portugal. The generally negative evaluation called for a revision of a number of its items. According to Houaiss, it "was considered too extreme. ... The strong opposition that it generated, especially in Portugal, was responsible for the failure of this agreement" (1991:14). Evaluating the 1986 Project, Ivo Castro says it is both extremely conservative, since it kept the outdated bases of 1945, and revolutionary for its radical, amateurish simplifications (1987:XIII).

In 1988, ACL produced a revised version of the 1986 Project. By then the Portuguese government had set up its own counseling body of language experts, the National Council for the Portuguese Language (CNALP), which was officially called upon to analyze the 1988 Project. In June, 1989, the committee issued a report pointing out shortcomings in the 1988 Project and recommending that it be accepted only after changes (CNALP 1990). The negative report was not well received by the government, which then excluded its own CNALP from the debate (Guerreiro 1991a).

In October, 1990, the same group of representatives that had drafted the 1986 Project met again to agree on a revised version of the 1986 and 1988 Projects, incorporating some of the suggestions in the CNALP report. The resulting document is the 1990 Accord - the focus of the present debate. Despite strong opposition from some groups, on June 4, 1991, the Portuguese government approved the Accord, which is yet to be voted upon by the Brazilian Congress.

Some have ventured to actually quantify the extent of innovation that the 1990 Orthographic Accord wants to bring to the two official standards it aims at superseding. Couri (1992) says it affects "fewer than three thousand, or 1.98% of the 110 thousand most usual words of the Portuguese language." According to her sources, fewer than 600 words would have two spellings according to the unified orthography. Rattner (1992), citing ACL sources, reports that the Orthographic Accord would affect 1.6% of the words spelled in the Portuguese norm, 0.45 of the words in the Brazilian norm. Finally, Augusto (1992a) cites Houaiss as saying that Brazilians would have to spell 3% of their words differently according to the 1990 Accord, the Portuguese, 4%. As can be seen, the numbers vary and the criteria are never explicit, reflecting the emotional tone of the debate.

The main spelling changes introduced have to do with the use of the hyphen, diacritics, or accents, and the silent consonants spelled only in European Portuguese.

The use of the hyphen is regulated in a rather convoluted way, so that words that are presently hyphenated drop their hyphens, and vice-versa. These rules involve potential subjectivities such as not using a hyphen in compound words in which the notion of composition has been lost. There are also a number of exceptions.

The rules regarding postvocalic silent consonant letters are the ones that affect the Portuguese the most. The Accord makes pronunciation a rule. The Brazilian official orthography (1943) does not have silent postvocalic consonants, so it does not have to change. However, the Portuguese presently spell a number of consonant letters which are not pronounced (the first in these clusters: cc, cç, ct, pc, pç, and pt), but which have diacritical value for the vowel that precedes them. To make things more interesting, Brazilians do pronounce a few of these consonants where the Portuguese do not. This turns out to be an important issue for the debaters of the Orthographic Accord, especially in Portugal, and is discussed in further detail below.

General assessments on the text of the Accord vary across a wide range. Bechara, a Brazilian traditional grammarian, raves about it as "the finest orthographic reform text for the Portuguese language since 1911" (1991). Cagliari, a Brazilian applied linguist, points out innumerous problems in the same text due to its phonographic rather than purely graphic criteria, and goes on to explain that "reformers, instead of looking at the word, try to establish generic rules. They thus fail to see certain problems and create others" (1993b:30).

The debate involves various groups: government agencies; educational associations; writers and journalists; language academies; the mass media; other specific groups; and public opinion (Geerts, van den Broeck and Verdoodt 1977). The main identifiable government agency involved is the Portuguese CNALP, created in 1989 as a consulting body of language experts. The two language academies, ACL and ABL, figure prominently in the debate as the sponsors of unification. In addition to these groups, a few individuals are especially important and noteworthy.

The main proponent of the Accord in Brazil is Antônio Houaiss, a diplomat and renowned scholar known primarily as a philologist and translator. His commitment to language planning issues is not new. Besides being a champion of the Accord, he has written on the need for standardization and renovation of scientific terminology as necessary steps for Portuguese to maintain its status as a language of culture. An ABL "immortal," Houaiss is also a member of the Brazilian Socialist Party, having run for vice-president in the near-winning ticket in 1989. From 1992 to 1993, Houaiss served as Brazil's Minister of Culture, and presently represents Brazil at UNESCO.

On the Portuguese side, the main supporter of the Accord seems to have been the Minister of Culture, Pedro Santana Lopes, accused of neglecting CNALP's urge for further studies and modifications before the 1988 Project was approved and also of promoting a rush for the approval of the 1990 Accord in the Portuguese parliament (Guerreiro 1991c). In addition to Lopes, the Portuguese President, Mário Soares, also favors the Accord.

These powerful debaters favor the Accord and back up the official discourse in its text. Critics of the Accord argue that they have personal interests in the implementation of the orthographic unification. Both positions are discussed in the next sections.

The Positions in the General Debate

Initially, the opinions about the Accord can roughly be divided into two main camps: those who feel a unification accord is not necessary, and those who feel it is at least desirable.

According to the view that a single orthographic standard is unnecessary, there is no good reason to worry about changing or unifying the orthographies of Portuguese. Most of those in this camp do not question the official objectives of the Accord. Some (such as A. Renault, an ABL member, cited in Piza 1992) call the whole thing nonsense. Whitaker Penteado (1990), the Brazilian communications professor who claims to have started the debate of the 1986 Project, argues that the 1990 Accord does not serve the interests of Brazilian users of Portuguese. Others, however, highlight what they believe are more important issues, such as education of the people, literacy campaigns, or the standardization of technical vocabulary. Santos (1993) and Perini (1993) both state that the allocation of resources to the Accord diverts attention from the true pressing needs of Brazil in terms of culture and education. Cagliari argues along these same lines, adding that there should be no laws about spelling and that the two norms should simply be made mutually accepted in both countries (1993b:31). This suggestion is never addressed by the proponents of the Accord in the documents examined.

Roberto Cardoso Alves, the Brazilian representative who heads the committee examining the issue in Congress, is one of the few critics of the Accord who actually refers to the official objectives of the unification. Alves does not think that "an agreement is essential to promote the culture and the language" (in Nogueira 1992). However, he adds that, despite his personal opinion against the Accord, he would recommend it for approval "in deference to" his friend José Aparecido de Oliveira.

Another group of debaters in this camp points to the uselessness of the Accord because, as they argue, the fact is that there are two languages involved, and that no unification reform or agreement can change this (Whitaker Penteado 1990; G. S. Lane, in Couri 1992). They are not saying the Accord is not desirable, but that it is impossible.

In the other camp, there is a much more visible (but divided) contingent of debaters. The common thread among them is the desire to have one single spelling for the entire Lusophone community. Their views of the ways to attain this ideal differ substantially. Those concerned with reaching some unification agreement once and for all defend the Accord as it is (cf. Bechara 1991). Others argue the 1990 Accord is too defective to qualify as a definitive solution to the orthographic quest, a position summarized in the title of an article in the Portuguese press: "From desired accord to the undesirable Accord" (Guerreiro 1991a:76).

Both these views are supported by various arguments discussed below. Meanwhile, a few take a position without discussing the merits or shortcomings of the Accord. José Saramago, probably the most widely read Portuguese writer in Brazil, simply says an Accord is necessary (in Couri 1992). His position is symptomatic of the entire debate, especially in light of his request that his books be published in Brazil in the Portuguese orthography. Another case in point - now from those who oppose the Accord because of its political rather than theoretical or scientific criteria - is that of University of Lisbon linguist Maria Helena Mira Mateus, who refused to answer questions in the press about the Accord after the Portuguese government disregarded the recommendations made by its own body of language experts (CNALP 1990; Guerreiro 1991d).

A common charge in both Portugal and Brazil against the format of the Accord is that the drafting of the document was authoritarian and unprofessional (Belard 1991; Prieto 1992; Piza 1992; Cagliari 1993a; Whitaker Penteado 1990; Uchôa 1993). Some resent the limited debate before its approval by the Portuguese government; others call for further debate in Brazil before Congress votes the Accord bill. Bechara (1991), arguing in favor of the Accord, says it is a fine text with broad coverage of the problems, and adds that eventual flaws can be corrected between approval and implementation.

The official discourse regarding the Accord, namely that of the drafters of the text, the two language Academies and the Portuguese government, is that a unified standard for Portuguese orthography would bring more prestige to the language and to the Lusophone community internationally (Houaiss 1991; Riding 1991; Couri 1992; Houaiss 1993; Bechara 1991). Silva and Gunnewiek (1992) summarize the strong version:

Most opponents do not question these arguments and only criticize the Accord as a bad solution to the unification question. The 1989 report issued by Portuguese language experts on the 1988 Project rejected it as was, but echoed the present Accord's premises that "the coexistence of two official orthographies hurt the intercontinental unity of Portuguese and its prestige in the world" (CNALP 1990:69).

Among the opinions examined, a rare example of a critic who does refer specifically to the official discourse supporting the Accord is a Portuguese journalist (Belard 1991). He does not question that grand objective, however. In fact, he reinforces it by asserting that the Portuguese norm should be the one used by the UN, since in his view

While most of these critics do not embrace the cause of unification openly either, there is hardly any questioning of the official agenda, and there seems to be a tacit (perhaps unconscious) agreement among debaters that Portuguese really needs a unified orthography. Exceptions are found in the latest opinions collected. Brazilian grammarian Gama Kury, arguing against the Accord said: "It would be a merely political agreement, not a linguistic one" (in Hidalgo 1993). A Brazilian professor of Portuguese also refers to the Accord as "above all else, a political question" (Santos 1993).

Thus the ensuing debate involves two different frames of reference: The drafters of the Accord and most of those who favor it have the necessity of a unification as their primary concern. The ones who would like an Accord on particular grounds - linguistic, scientific, educational, or editorial efficiency - have those particular grounds as their primary concerns. Most language experts take the latter stance.

The debaters therefore have incompatible agendas. A clear contrast between these agendas is evident in the following statements by a Portuguese linguist and a Brazilian traditional grammarian respectively:

According to Geerts et al., those who use this argument say that "one is accustomed to a certain spelling and, however inconsequent this may be, it will always take some time to get used to a reform and hence one would rather stick to the status quo" (1977:202). In opposition, there are those who say: "It is simply a matter of time. After a while one gets used to the new spelling and soon forgets the old" (Geerts et al. 1977:202). This is the view of Bechara, who praises the Accord for regulating many spelling problems and then argues that "the changes in relation to what is presently practiced can be easily and rapidly learned" (1991). A synthetic version of the counterargument is expressed by the Portuguese President, Mário Soares: "We must evolve" (in Couri 1992).

This is a recurring argument in the Luso-Brazilian debate, with a more comprehensive reach than described for the Dutch-Flemish discussion. Geerts et al. gloss it as: "This is the hundredth change in a relatively short time. Can't we finally stop making fools of ourselves" (1977:203). Although this is said often unreflectedly by those who dismiss the Accord as unnecessary, some critics also come up with theoretical support for it. A Brazilian applied linguist (Cagliari 1993a; 1993b) goes into detail to argue that, in terms of literacy, the less an orthography is changed, the more valuable it is. Some Portuguese critics refer to the fact that the Accord will "reinforce the orthographic instability" of the language (Belard 1991). Aguiar e Silva, the former coordinator of the Portuguese government's counseling commission on language (CNALP), is quoted as saying the Accord will disrupt the accepted Portuguese norm in the EEC and in the PALOP (in Guerreiro 1991d:82).

Of course, the counterargument is that unification must come now, or it will become impossible in the future. Also, some say that there have been so many changes in the past without casualties, that this time it won't be worse. This is an implicit argument in the discourse of those whose concern is that there be an orthographic unification. Bechara, the traditional grammarian who sympathizes with the drafters of the Accord, makes the argument explicit, and adds that there will be plenty of "institutions and techniques in both countries to trim and perfect the rules in the Accord after it is approved" (1991).

Houaiss (in Couri 1992) sees the Accord as beneficial to the global Lusophone readership because it will enable the circulation of books which, according to him, are currently restricted to a single orthographic jurisdiction. This argument is also echoed by Silveira, a Brazilian editor and journalist in a collection of articles debating the Accord (1993:27). Inês Duarte, a linguist at the University of Lisbon, counterargues that it is exactly "this fallacy" that makes the Accord "something similar to the emperor's new clothes" (in Guerreiro 1991d:80). According to her, co-editions will not be possible because the Accord, by allowing for optional spellings, is in fact keeping the problem which prevented co-editions from being produced: the two standard orthographies.

In more clearly financial terms, there are critics who say that the Accord is the result of special-interest groups and individuals intending to reap profits from the publication of dictionaries, grammarbooks and manuals, since all present materials will be made obsolete. This opinion is expressed most directly by a professor at the University of Lisbon, president of the Movement Against the Orthographic Accord (Prieto 1992). The Brazilian deputy in charge of examining the Accord in Congress has said "there are many commercial interests [behind the Accord] - interests in new editions of grammarbooks, dictionaries, elementary school textbooks" (in Nogueira 1992).

Another twist of this argument is that the Brazilian publishing houses, believed to be more aggressive than the Portuguese, are interested in expanding their markets to Portugal and into the potentially lucrative PALOP school textbook business (Riding 1991; Neves 1991; Santos 1993). As Cooper points out, the "variability in written forms also imposes a problem upon printers and publishers, who seek as broad a market as possible for their texts. The larger the population that shares a linguistic norm, the larger the publisher's market" (1989:137). At least one Brazilian publisher, Arthur Nestrovski, validates this view, despite his position against the Accord (in Piza 1992). The editorial director of the largest Brazilian publishing house specializing in didactic materials, José B. Duarte, who favors the Accord, denies the charges, stating that the Portuguese editorial market is very solid (in Piza 1992).

The strong version of the editorial argument develops into concerns for the real interests of some of the champions of the unification Accord. Prieto, for instance, accuses Houaiss, the main proponent of the Accord in Brazil, of being interested in turning his own dictionary under preparation into a best-seller (in Rattner 1992).

This raises questions about the role of the language planner in the implementation of the orthographic unification. Cooper observes that in standardization efforts, language is often used as "a rallying point for the formation of national consciousness, but those who promote the language also promote themselves as a protoelite who will come to power with the political apparatus they create" (1989:69). In the light of these words, we can find some resonance to Prieto's otherwise unfounded accusations, especially when the official agenda of supranational integration and the positions held by its champions come to mind.

In the Dutch-Flemish spelling reform this argument had to do with the dis/advantages of a simplified orthography for the children who must learn it. In the Luso-Brazilian debate, the instructional consequences of the changes proposed in the Accord are expanded and referred to within the discussion of other arguments.

Uchôa also charges that the defenders of the Accord claim unrealistic educational advantages of the new unified orthography to win public favor for their cause. According to him, the simplifications proposed in the Accord would not facilitate the acquisition of literacy nor result in fewer orthographic problems (1993:38). Perini, a Brazilian linguist, corroborates Uchôa's points, and adds that the Accord does not even succeed in producing a more coherent phonological spellings, which could perhaps be a little easier for children to learn than the ones presently used (1993:37).

This argument also follows from the silent consonant issue in Portugal, and its logic will not be clear to a Brazilian without explanation. According to some Portuguese purists, the new spelling will affect the pronunciation of the vowel preceding the consonant to be eliminated. They fear that people will soon mispronounce those words, since they will miss the vowel-quality indicator. This is perhaps the most outlandish of the arguments in terms of modern linguistic and sociolinguistic theory.

In his analysis of the debate of the 1986 Project, Rui Castro discusses similar veins of "linguistic myths" (1987:119). Such myths are often found in the debate of the 1990 Accord as well, even among language experts (cf. Bechara 1991). Ferguson refers to "the folk belief that the written language is the 'real' language and that the speech is a corruption of it." He points out that the currency of this belief plays a role in limiting "the conscious intervention in the form of language planning that the community will conceive of or accept" (1968:30). Mira Mateus echoes this concern when she writes that "the orthography learned in early childhood is easily confused with the language itself - which evokes curious reactions in the defense of what is considered an untouchable patrimony" (1993:33).

Whitaker Penteado also deals directly with the issue to argue against the Accord from a Brazilian point of view. According to this debater, the Accord is of interest only to the Portuguese, who, he claims, are eager to reverse the growing preference for the Brazilian variety, for example, in international organizations and in Portuguese-as-a-foreign-language courses in foreign universities (1990).

Silveira calls for a less passionate examination of the question and argues that it is not the case that the former colonies want to take revenge and impose their norms on the former colonial metropolis through "mere demographic osmosis," or that Portugal is trying to recolonize the Portuguese language in Brazil and in Africa (1993:24). As a rare PALOP voice in the debate, Cape Verdean linguist Manuel Veiga sees no preference for either the Portuguese or the Brazilian standard in the 1990 Accord (in Neves 1991).

The real point of this argument seems to be that the predicted optionality issue raises doubts about what an orthography is (Mira Mateus 1993:33). If an orthography is a set of rules, and if the problem that the Accord tries to solve is the double official orthographic standard, producing rules stating optional spellings is a serious internal contradiction. Bechara counterargues with the axiom that "the duplicity of forms is far from meaning that the Accord will not unify the spelling of the language" (1991). One is again reminded of the suggestion of mutual official recognition of the two orthographies.

This issue is indicative of the incompatible frames of reference which guide the different debaters. Those who defend the Accord as it is, and who implicitly espouse the view that a unification must be reached now, argue that the 1990 Accord is the only possible political compromise at this point (cf. Lindley Cintra in a newspaper article revealingly titled "Unification above all else" [Guerreiro 1991c]). Those who would prefer a more careful unification agreement want a unification that is scientifically sound as well as politically possible.

The debate over the orthographic unification Accord for the Lusophone world reveals a community that is ambivalent about its status, oscillating between a nostalgic and self-aggrandizing drive to unity, and a more realistic concern with conflicting interests over limited resources that restricts integration. As Schmitz points out,

Recent diplomatic clashes between Portugal and Brazil over immigration, for example, exposed the ugly aspect of having to attend to pragmatic considerations of a political and economic nature at the expense of noble considerations about cultural or linguistic commonalty. Italo Zappa, a retired Brazilian diplomat, referring to the immigration matter, could well be warning Brazilians about the orthographic debate: "Portugal is a foreign country and not an extension of Brazil in Europe, as some people tend to believe on the basis of sentimentalism. It has its own interests and it is only natural that it should try to defend them" (in Gryzinski 1993).

As the post-modern world loses its single hegemonic centers, and nations rearrange their alliances, it is inevitable that the Luso-Brazilian "special relation" (Riding 1991) also change. The debate fails to discuss this directly, either because debaters do not want to face facts (sentimentalism), or because it is ideologically less complex to refer to "cultural integration" than it is to address issues in terms of politics and economics.

Cooper points out that the language resulting from corpus renovation "fulfills no new communicative functions. But if the new forms carry out old communicative functions, they also contribute to the nonlinguistic goals which motivated the linguistic renovation" (1989:154). It is thus both comprehensible and perfectly legitimate that the Accord should be driven by the political wishes of the two Lusophone nations to have a unified orthography that will allow them to claim a more tangible (economic and political) status for their (variety of the) language. Yet, if we look at the official discourse candidly, it appears that the fuel moving the unification impetus is the obstinate idealism of those who believe that the double orthographic standard prevents Portuguese from assuming the more prestigious role in international communication and in Western culture that it righteously deserves. This, however, is hard to maintain after a careful analysis of the debate, as it is also hard to ignore that the unification would naturally yield personal and political prestige to those who help achieve it.

In spite of that, the Accord merits recognition as a successful political and diplomatic achievement. If implemented, it shall manage to unify the orthography in two countries that shared a common past, but that inevitably have different futures. In another vein, we can say, tongue in cheek, that the Accord has a noble diplomatic goal supported by powerful sponsors and interests both in Brazil and in Portugal.

The 1990 Accord is thus a success if taken on the terms of its official discourse, but it attains this success at the expense of linguistic efficiency. To the chagrin of those who would like to see an orthographic unification based on linguistic criteria, it seems that the 1990 Accord is the only possible unification document that can be drafted by the Lusophone nations at this point. As Portugal reacted chauvinistically to defend its tradition, its nostalgic past, against the carelessly sprawling Brazil, the urge to produce a unification Accord at all costs overruled most concerns with linguistic efficiency. The result is that the official argument is weak in the face of the needs of the community of users of the language, since there are few objective linguistic reasons to favor the Accord as it is. Unfortunately, it is issues of linguistic efficiency - not high on the sponsors' agenda - that the most earnest opponents of the orthographic unification cling to.

Thus the general discourse of the debate has different referents, depending on the purposes attached to the Accord by the debaters. The problem is that the debaters refuse to acknowledge the validity of both types of concerns and cling to their own exclusive agenda, while the debate goes on as if the participants were all referring to the same issues. This gives the discussion a certain psychotic air that is at times ridiculous and at times irritating.

Among the various testimonies and opinions reviewed in this report, two seem to be especially apropos as telling summaries. The first is the paradoxical statement by the Brazilian congressman who heads the committee examining the Accord, who sees no real purpose in it, but who nevertheless said he would recommend it since his friend, then Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs, wanted it. The other is the statement by a Brazilian journalist at the opening of this paper: "Portugal and Brazil are staging a deaf war over a language that the world ignores even in its best literary forms" (Ascher 1993).

Finally, the case of corpus renovation discussed here is indicative of the extent to which language planning is a political and ideological practice rather than a purely (socio)linguistic enterprise. The Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Accord for the Lusophone Community and the debate around it exemplify both the complexity of the forces that operate in language planning and the lack of clarity among language experts and users regarding what the activity they are involved in is all about. One may conclude that academic knowledge about language planning could be an invaluable asset for language experts involved in such debates. It is my belief that language experts could act much more effectively if they approached these language planning problems more broadly, and if they attempted to deal with the political and ideological problems tied to linguistic issues as a fact of life in complex modern societies, and not as if sociolinguistic efficiency could be achieved in a vacuum where language experts antiseptically would make scientific decisions which ignore political ideology. Unfortunately, a language planning rationale is not presently made use of in any systematic way in the Luso-Brazilian context.

Graduate School of Education

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia PA 19104 USA

e-mail: garcezpm@dolphin.upenn.edu

Este trabalho examina um caso de planejamento lingüístico para fins de aperfeiçoamento do corpo da língua: o Acordo Ortográfico Luso-Brasileiro de 1990, assinado pelos representantes dos sete países de língua oficial portuguesa. Apresenta-se inicialmente um apanhado histórico-social da padronização e expansão do português, da distribuição da língua no mundo atual e do desenvolvimento de suas normas gráficas. O exame do Acordo e do debate do mesmo é feito a partir da análise das diversas posições tomadas por autores/as de artigos jornalísticos e acadêmicos sobre a questão e dos argumentos por eles/elas usados . Tais argumentos são contrastadados com aqueles apresentados por Geerts, van den Broeck e Verdoodt (1977) em análise de um caso semelhante. Conclui-se que, apesar da maior parte do debate tratar de questões relativas à eficiência lingüística, o Acordo e seus proponentes são guiados primordialmente por critérios relativos à eficiência política e diplomática.

             PEDRO M. GARCEZ is a doctoral candidate in Education, Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, and             a  CNPq (Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development) scholar.