Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 1437
Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)
Pronominal Syncretism in the Urban Area of Brasília - Brazil’s Capital
Authors: Pereira Scherre, Maria Marta (1); Queiroz Andrade, Carolina (2); Dias, Edilene Patrícia (2); Garcia Lucca, Nívia Naves (2); Vidigal Soares de Andrade, Adriana Lilia (2)
Submitted by: Pereira Scherre, Maria Marta (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil)
The goal of this study is to present results of sociolinguistic research on the use of second person pronouns TU/VOCÊ in the speech of Brasília, Brazil’s capital, which will be 52 years old in April, 2012. The central point is that Brasília’s speech, considered non-marked, is an urban variety in the process of dialect focalization which shows clear evidence of incorporating the pronoun tu without verb agreement, a socially, geographically and interactionally marked variant.
Brasília’s demographic composition is essential for understanding TU/VOCÊ variation, specially the retention of tu. The pioneers in Brasília, those that built and first populated it, came mostly from the Northeast: 41.45%, but all other Brazilian regions contributed: Southeast: 30,72%; Center-West: 22.75%; South: 1.98%; and North: 0.92%. International settlers were 2.18%. Furthermore, the distribution of those immigrants in the 30 different Administrative Regions, or RAs, which nowadays comprise Brasília, is very diverse. In 2010 Brasília’s urban population was 2.5 million, a big young city.
The analyses used for this presentation were carried out according to the principles of the Linguistic Variation Theory (Labov 1975). Several social and linguistic variables were taken into account but, for this paper, we have selected: age; place of residence; sex/gender; parent’s origin; profession; relationship between speakers; and type of discourse. The 2309 recorded tokens were statistically analyzed using Goldvarb X (Sankoff et alii 2005).
Speech samples of people born in Brasília were recorded between 1992 and 2009 in different RAs: Sobradinho; Taguatinga; Ceilândia; Plano Piloto and Vila Planalto, sub-regions of the first RA. Therefore, this paper is a documentary of the use of second person pronouns, which is one of the features of the dialect focalization which Brasília is going through, in the terms of Bortoni-Ricardo et alii (2010). The results show that the greater Brasília uses the subsystem Tu/Você or Você/Tu (Scherre et alii 2009) and that tu is used in different rates in all age groups and RAs studied. Furthermore, tu is favored by males, people whose parents came from the Northeast and those engaged in alternative professional paths. Friendly relationships and discourse intimacy also favor tu.
Brasília synthesizes Brazil: adopts variably a supra-regional tu without verb agreement, which spreads through comprehensive social and discursive domains as a local feature, and, at the same time, keeps the pronouns você and cê, but not ocê, another marked variant of central Brazil. Brasilia´s tu becomes a feature of dialect focalization showing that even a strong marked variant may integrate processes of dialect focalization.
References:
Bortoni-Ricardo, Stella Maris; Vellasco, Ana Maria & Freitas, Vera (orgs.). 2010. O Falar Candango – Análise sociolingüística dos processos de difusão e focalização dialetais. Brasília: Editora da UnB.
Labov, William. Sociolinguistics Patterns. 1975. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Sankoff, D; Tagliamonte, Sali; Smith, E. Goldvarb X - A multivariate analysis application. 2005. Toronto: Department of Linguistics; Ottawa: Department of Mathematics.
Scherre, Marta; Lucca, Nívia; Dias, Patrícia; Andrade, Queiroz & Martins, Germano. 2009. Usos dos pronomes você e tu no português brasileiro. II SIMELP - Universidade de Évora. Unpublished Manuscript.