Variação estilística e identidade: a concordância de número e o retroflexo na fala goiana

• Autor(a) principal: Souza, Elaine Cristina Borges de
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (riUfes)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/12738
• topic: Linguística; Sociolinguística; Variação estilística; Fala goiana; Etnografia digital; Concordância nominal de número; /R/ retroflexo

The objective of this thesis is to show the existence of identity traits in Goianian speech, by means of the phenomena of nominal number agreement and the /R/ retroflex, that is, that there is a set of linguistic traits that make up the Goianian linguistic identity and that these phenomena participate in the composition of the so-called “Goianês”. Our work is in line with the research results of Shirley Mattos (2013; 2017) which show that there is an identity trait in the Goianian speech in the verbal agreement with the pronoun we in the urban orality. In order to contextualize our research, we present a brief outline on Linguistics, Variationist Sociolinguistics and proposals for the analysis of the stylistic variation: William Labov's Decision Tree approach (2001a; 2001b; 2008 [1972]); Allan Bell’s the Audience Design (1984; 2001), and Penelope Eckert’s Speaker Design (2000; 2001) and Nikolas Coupland (2001). In general, the research is developed from the perspective of the third wave in Sociolinguistics, which proposes analytical and methodological practices in continuity with previous trends, focusing on identity and agentivity aspects. Also trying to understand the phenomena proposed as identity traits of the Goianese, we present the concept of covert prestige (LABOV, 1982 [1966]; LABOV, 2008 [1972]; TRUDGILL, 1972, MILROY; MILROY, 1999 [1985]) for spelling out the reasons why particular groups or communities choose to use a nonstandard form rather than the standard form, which is expected to be the prestige form in terms of overt prestige. To show that in Goiás a positive value is attributed to what is outside the norm and/or is stigmatized, we carried out historical research which is supported by the methodology of digital ethnography (KOZINETS, 2014; POSTILL, 2017) to indicate how goianity was built and is now spread and understood in the social networks, as well as to illustrate how the Goianian understands their own speech. The research also includes an analysis of the nominal number agreement and the retroflex /R/ from a sample obtained from recordings in natural speech situations. These phenomena will be analyzed based on the speech of a female informant, 28 years old, with 18 years of schooling, a teacher in the municipal teaching network of Goiânia and a theater actress who was born and has always lived in Goiânia, in the same house. Our objective was to analyze the linguistic behavior of an informant who is, on the one hand, typically from Goiás and, on the other hand, fits the social characteristics of a speaker who tends to use the most prestigious forms. Altogether, we analyzed 989 data for the nominal agreement and 1353 for the variation of /R/ in the syllabic coda. For the noun agreement, we controlled the presence or absence of a formal mark of agreement in the inflected elements of the noun phrase based on linguistic variables: relative and linear position of the elements of the noun phrase; linguistic parallelism (preceding marks) and phonic salience in the singular/plural relationship. In the analysis of the retroflex /R/, we considered two linguistic variables: position of the syllabic coda and grammatical class, divided only between verb in the infinitive and non-verb. For both analyses, a stylistic variable was also considered: interactional context. The quantitative data analysis was performed using the software GoldVarb X (SANKOFF; TAGLIAMONTE; SMITH, 2005). The results showed the confluence of factors that act in the analyzed phenomena: in relation to the linguistic variables, the two phenomena showed regularity with other research carried out on Brazilian Portuguese in which factors act more strongly for the realization of noun agreement marks and presence of /R/ retroflex in syllabic coda. When we turn to the analysis of the stylistic variable, we see the informant's stylistic transit capacity that changes the use of noun agreement marks as well as the use of the /R/ retroflex depending on which persona assumes. Isolating the data from contexts in which the interaction takes place among close friends, it is still possible to conclude that the informant has a feeling of solidarity with the other members of the group and makes greater use of the forms that, in Brazilian Portuguese, are stigmatized as typical of a caipira speech. This use of non-standard forms with a sense of solidarity and identity associated with the informant's ability to increase the use of prestigious forms in other interactional contexts is an element that leads us to identify Goianese as a case of hidden prestige.