Dialectal contact in Brazilian Portuguese: patterns and gaps
Document Type
Keynote
Location
Plenary Session - Ballroom
Start Date
18-10-2024 5:00 PM
End Date
18-10-2024 6:00 PM
Abstract
Sociolinguistic studies have generally focused on speech samples of non-mobile speakers in monolingual communities or on language contact situations resulting from immigration (Chambers 1992, Siegel 2010). Although mobility and dialectal contact tend to be the rule rather than the exception in most urban communities, the speech of internal migrants has not received as much attention.
This talk discusses patterns of dialect acquisition and maintenance in the speech of internal migrants from Northeastern Brazil living in the southeastern state of São Paulo. I will first present results from different research projects which have analyzed the extent to which phonetic, prosodic, and morphosyntactic features of São Paulo Portuguese are acquired by migrants from seven different states, and the social factors correlated with these changes. While most phonetic variables correlate with speakers’ age of migration in the expected direction (the earlier the arrival, the greater the use of host community’s traits), no morphosyntactic variable does. A longer period of residence affects only salient phonetic features – namely, the pronunciation of coda /r/, as in po[ɾ, ɻ, h]ta ‘door’, and coda /s/, as in pa[s, ʃ]ta ‘folder’ –, and has a weaker effect than age of arrival. Phonetic variables are particularly sensitive to stylistic variation (understood as ‘attention paid to speech’; Labov 2001), but reading (vs. conversation) doesn’t necessarily trigger the use of features from the Northeast or São Paulo, but supralocal norms.
In the second part of the talk, I will turn to one of the many questions which are still open in dialectal contact studies: even though coherent patterns emerge in migrants’ speech, there is great dispersion among individual speakers. Is it the case that migrants’ speech is more conditioned by individuals than by sociodemographic categories?
Results so far clearly show that migrants’ speech is just as patterned as that of prototypical non-mobile speakers in the community. The many factors that potentially influence their linguistic behavior – ranging from attitudes, interlocutors, individual abilities to the sociodemographic aspects of migration – make dialectal contact a fruitful road for new studies.
Dialectal contact in Brazilian Portuguese: patterns and gaps
Plenary Session - Ballroom
Sociolinguistic studies have generally focused on speech samples of non-mobile speakers in monolingual communities or on language contact situations resulting from immigration (Chambers 1992, Siegel 2010). Although mobility and dialectal contact tend to be the rule rather than the exception in most urban communities, the speech of internal migrants has not received as much attention.
This talk discusses patterns of dialect acquisition and maintenance in the speech of internal migrants from Northeastern Brazil living in the southeastern state of São Paulo. I will first present results from different research projects which have analyzed the extent to which phonetic, prosodic, and morphosyntactic features of São Paulo Portuguese are acquired by migrants from seven different states, and the social factors correlated with these changes. While most phonetic variables correlate with speakers’ age of migration in the expected direction (the earlier the arrival, the greater the use of host community’s traits), no morphosyntactic variable does. A longer period of residence affects only salient phonetic features – namely, the pronunciation of coda /r/, as in po[ɾ, ɻ, h]ta ‘door’, and coda /s/, as in pa[s, ʃ]ta ‘folder’ –, and has a weaker effect than age of arrival. Phonetic variables are particularly sensitive to stylistic variation (understood as ‘attention paid to speech’; Labov 2001), but reading (vs. conversation) doesn’t necessarily trigger the use of features from the Northeast or São Paulo, but supralocal norms.
In the second part of the talk, I will turn to one of the many questions which are still open in dialectal contact studies: even though coherent patterns emerge in migrants’ speech, there is great dispersion among individual speakers. Is it the case that migrants’ speech is more conditioned by individuals than by sociodemographic categories?
Results so far clearly show that migrants’ speech is just as patterned as that of prototypical non-mobile speakers in the community. The many factors that potentially influence their linguistic behavior – ranging from attitudes, interlocutors, individual abilities to the sociodemographic aspects of migration – make dialectal contact a fruitful road for new studies.