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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 139

Thematic Session (Papers belonging to this Thematic Session)

The City Speaks: Variation and Change in São Paulo

Authors: Mendes, Ronald; Kewitz, Verena; Oushiro, Livia; Rodrigues, Angela; Bentes, Anna Christina; Rocha, Rafael
Submitted by: Bentes, Anna (UNICAMP, Brazil)

As one of the largest and most diverse cities in the world, São Paulo has received little attention from variationists to date (Mendes, 2009; Rodrigues 2009). While it has been documented through research projects such as “NURC-SP” (Urban Cultivated Norm – Castilho and Preti, 1986), “Gramática do Português Falado” (Spoken Portuguese Grammar – Castilho et al., 2006) and, more recently, “Projeto Para a História  do Português Brasileiro” (Project for the History of Brazilian Portuguese – Castilho, 2009), the Paulistano variety has mostly been studied indirectly (Oushiro 2011). This thematic session aims at gathering presentations that focus on cases of language variation and change in São Paulo, in order to build an overview of the Portuguese spoken in that city and indicate directions for future work.

Theoretically, this session aims at discussing language complexity. We assume that language can be conceived of as a set of processes and products in continuous variation and change. The components of such complexity are not linear, but rather dynamic and multidirectional, and linguistic items display grammatical, lexical, semantic and discourse features simultaneously. Those features are gathered in Grammar, Semantics, Lexicon and Discourse (products) as well as in grammaticalization, semanticization, lexicalization and discoursivization (processes), in a way that there is no necessary hierarchy among them. Such perspective implies a commitment to transdisciplinarity (Castilho 2009: 131).

Based on these assumptions, core questions under discussion will include: (i) Is São Paulo one single speech community? (ii) How can we account for the current linguistic complexity in the city? (iii) What does it mean to sound like a Paulistano? (iv) Beyond sociophonetics, are there grammatical variants associated with the city? (v) To what extent do cultural models provide elements for linguistic choices (Geeraerts 2003)?

The first and second questions address the theoretical and methodological problem of how to approach, as a sociolinguist, a city that is so huge (11 million people) and so diverse (home both to people born and raised there, and to immigrants from all over Brazil as well as the rest of the world). The second question, specifically, leads us to fields like Social History, Sociology and Historical Linguistics. The third question concerns current research projects that deal with the relationship between phonetic variation and the expression of Paulistano identity, from both the perspective of perception and of production. The fourth question speaks to whether certain grammatical variables in São Paulo are used differently, in relation to other Brazilian varieties that have been more extensively described. Finally, the last question looks into possible relationships between language variation and change and how speakers perceive and describe the world around them.

References

CastilCastilho, Ataliba T. de (2009) História do Português Paulista. Vol. I. Série Estudos. Campinas, IEL/Publicações.

Castilho, Ataliba T. (2006) Apresentação. In Jubran, Clélia C. A. S. & Koch, Ingedore G. V. (Eds.). Gramática do Português Culto Falado no Brasil. Vol. I: Construção do Texto Falado. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.

Castilho, Ataliba T. de / PRETI, Dino (1986) A linguagem falada culta na cidade de São Paulo: materiais para seu estudo. Elocuções Formais. Vol. I. São Paulo, T.A.Queiroz/Fapesp.

Geeraerts, Dirk (2003) Cultural models of linguistics standardization. In Dirven/Frank/Pütz (eds.) Cognitive Models in Language and Thought: Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings. Berlin, Mouton De Gruyter, p.25-68.

Mendes, Ronald Beline (2009) Who sounds /r/-ful? The pronunciation of /r/ in São Paulo Portuguese. Paper presented at NWAV 38.

Oushiro, Lívia (2011) Identidade na Pluralidade: Produção e Percepção Linguística na Cidade de São Paulo. FAPESP Ph.D. Research Project. (Proc. N. 2009/09122-6)

Rodrigues, Angela C. S. (2009) Fotografia sociolinguística do português do Brasil: o português popular em São Paulo. In: Castilho, Ataliba T. (Ed.), História do Português Paulista. Vol. I, Série Estudos. Campinas: IEL/Publicações