• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1240

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

The role represented by gender in Brazilian Portuguese: a study of linguistic and social profiles

Authors: Medeiros, Carolina Salgado Lacerda
Submitted by: Medeiros, Carolina Salgado Lacerda (UFRJ, Brazil)

A much discussed issue in Brazilian Portuguese is linguistic diversity, especially if one considers the regional dialects that have been described in this continental country. Despite the several linguistic differences that we can see between Brazilian speakers, due mainly to a very unequal social and economical scenario, it is possible to see linguistic similarities, especially with regard to morpho-syntactic phenomena. In fact, quantitative results about morpho-syntactic phenomena (such as the expression of subjects) reveal that there are more similarities among the speakers, regardless of social class, than between written and spoken varieties (Duarte, 2008; Cavalcante & Duarte, 2008). It raises a question concerning the difference between women and men in present day urban societies: until the end of the nineteenth century, men and women lived through very different social situations. By this time, 95% of men were literate while only 58% of women were (Leite & Callou, 2005). Traditional dialectology’s studies show that, on the one hand, women tend to keep archaic features, but on the other, accept the change more easily, with more instability in speech than men. The social profile between the two genders, among other criteria, tends to determine this variation. Present day speech samples of men and women are closer than before, due to the changing social profile of women today, who have as much access to education as men. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the role played by each gender in every society. Hence, the question remains: is variation triggered by the social roles represented by men and women throughout the centuries? Can we dissociate the linguistic and the social roles of an individual? In other to discuss the idea of more similarities and disparities of the Brazilian Portuguese, this study aims to debate the notion of social and linguistic profiles. To this end it intends to analyze two or more morpho-syntactic phenomena taking into account both social and linguistic factors. The data used on this study are extracted from two different corpora: PEUL (http://www.letras.ufrj.br/peul/historia.html), a corpus based on interviews with speakers of Rio de Janeiro with low-level of education; and NURC (http://www.letras.ufrj.br/nurc-rj/), which was established during the 1970’s with speakers with university degree in five different Brazilian cities (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Recife and Salvador).

References:
CAVALCANTE, S. R. O. & DUARTE, M. E. L. The subject position of infinitival sentences in Brazilian Portuguese: the embedding of a syntactic change. Working Papers in Linguistics (Philadelphia, Pa.) (Cessou em 2008. Cont. Working Papers in Linguistics (Philadelphia, Pa.: Online), v. 14, p. 157-161, 2008.
DUARTE, M. E. L. . O sujeito de referência indeterminada em sentenças infinitivas. Revista do GEL (Araraquara), v. 5, p. 9-30, 2008.
LEITE, Yonne & CALLOU, Dinah. Como falam os brasileiros. Rio de Janeiro (Jorge Zahar), p. 34, 2005.