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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 824

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

Speaker's linguistic awareness: a definition according to the variant type

Authors: da Hora, Dermeval; Vogeley, Ana Carla Estellita
Submitted by: da Hora, Dermeval (Universidade Federal da Paraíba / CNPq, Brazil)

The Sociolinguistic studies developed by Labov, in the sixties and in subsequent years of the twentieth century, were crucial for the initiation and continuation of other studies conducted in different parts of the world. From the social stratification variables and observing their correlation with structural factors, it was possible to establish systematic patterns in various aspects of language, especially with regard to the phonological one. Implemented works demonstrate that greater emphasis was given to the social and structural variables with little attention paid to the variable style. We know that the sociolinguistic methodology, regarding the contextual style, has focused on two approaches. On the one hand, the change of style seen as ethnographic phenomenon, on the other, as a mechanism controlled by measuring the dynamics of sociolinguistic variation. Knowing as much as possible about the ways speakers and change its frequency in everyday life is a challenge. And the change in style seems to be one of the keys to what we see as the central problem of the theory of language change: the problem of transmission (Labov, 2001). Linked to the question of style is the role of linguistic awareness that may prove to be the attitude of the speaker-hearer in relation both to their own speech as that of others. Using data from Project Linguistic Variation in Paraíba /Brazil - VALPB (HORA, 1993) and data from Project Phonological Variation of Brazilian Portuguese: rural speech zone, the latter held, in Tejucupapo-PE, our goal is to assess the attitude of speaker in relation to phonological processes that can be categorized as punctual as much as global, considering structural and prosodic aspects. An analysis of data from two projects allows us to state that the speaker is aware of the variants that can be categorized as “stereotypes”, like the palato-alveolar fricative /S/, present to speak in Rio de Janeiro, the "miss" retroflex as a mark of São Paulo and also of the palato-alveolar stops /t, d/ dialects present in the southern and southeastern Brazil. On the other hand, variants classified as "indicators" and "markers" do not draw attention. In the first case, is what happens to propretonic middle vowels in "menino" (boy), "Recife", etc.., and in the second case, are examples such as the deletion of the "d" in the group -ndo, in forms such as "cantando" vs. "cantano" (singing), "falando" vs. "falano" (talking) in the style that favors the standard forms, respectively, "cantando" and "falando". 

HORA, Dermeval da. Projeto Variação Linguística no Estado da Paraíba, 1993. 

LABOV, William.The anatomy of style-shifting. In: ECKERT, Penelope; RICKFORD, John R. Style and sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 85-108.