This paper considers a moment in the historical process of the constitution of Portuguese as a curricular discipline in Brazil. In the 70s of the twentieth century, changes were carried out in the structure of the educational system. The authorities responsible for the educational system produced documents to subsidize, theoretically and methodologically, the curricular changes proposed. Discursive analysis of these documents reveals important characteristics about the modes of appropriation, with didactic objectives, of academic knowledge about language. The analysis also provides evidence that the referred moment is characterized by concurrent conceptions of knowledge, public policy and language teaching.
teaching of the Portuguese language; curriculum; history of school subjects