Crenças e atitudes linguísticas de paraenses e cearenses na Região Nordeste do Pará: um estudo sobre o abaixamento das vogais médias pretônicas

Abstract

The present Thesis aimed to investigate the linguistic beliefs and attitudes of speakers living in the Northeast of Pará State (Santa Maria do Pará, São Miguel do Guamá, Aurora do Pará, Mãe do Rio, Ipixuna do Pará localities) towards the variation of pretonic, in the light of the theoretical-methodological principles of Multidimensional Dialectology, Sociolinguistics and the Study of Linguistic Beliefs (LAMBERT and LAMBERT, 1972; RADTKE and THUN, 1996; LABOV, 2008; BOTASSINI, 2013; FREITAG and SANTOS, 2016 ). This research is justified by the contribution it will bring to linguistic studies in the Northern Region, where there is a shortage of research of this nature. It is expected to contribute to the understanding of linguistic variation and change and, consequently, help in the fight against linguistic prejudice (SILVA and AGUILERA, 2014). For its execution, the pretonic average vowels were analyzed from the speech of Ceará migrants and Pará natives in five survey points, based on the sample the diatopic dimension (eight informants from each locality), subdivided into topostatic (six natives from each locality) and topodynamics (two Ceará migrants in each locality). The sample was stratified according to the diasexual (4 female and 4 male) and diagenerational (18 to 25 years and 50 to 65 years) dimensions. Data was collected by interviews: the occurrences of the object vowels were collected through reading, questionnaire response and narratives; Belief and attitude data were collected through the quantitative questionnaire, using the matched guise test technique, and a qualitative questionnaire, as well as the self-assessment test. All material collected was organized for transcription in Praat. Three corpora were constituted: one of mean occurrences, with control of lowering and not lowering; another one from the answers of the quantitative attitude questionnaire and another one for the qualitative analysis. The quantitative data corpus was coded in Excel for statistical treatment in Goldvarb X. The qualitative data corpus was categorized for further analysis. The results showed that the realization of [e] and [o] predominates in the speech of natives and migrants of the localities, following the tendency of other regions of Pará (RAZKY, LIMA and OLIVEIRA, 2012; CRUZ, 2012). For the lowering of / e / and / o /, the open vowels, in both tonic and contiguous position, and the degree of nasality of the vowel of the stressed syllable favored the phenomenon, evidencing the vowel harmony as a major driver of this phenomenon. The degree of formality was not significant to the application of lowering. Of the social factors, the origin of the informant, a single group considered significant, favored the phenomenon in the speech of migrants. Gender and age group were not probalistically significant, but in percentage terms, there was a higher occurrence of lower speech in women and young people. The subjective attitudes revealed that the people from Ceara,Belem and local dialects enjoy a certain prestige, because they were evaluated positively, with percentages above 70%. Diatopically, the results differ presenting positive evaluations sometimes to the local dialect, sometimes to Belém or to Ceará inhabitants. Migrants attributed more positive ratings to the dialects than the native ones. From the diassexual point of view, men preferred the local and Ceará dialects, and women, the local and Belem’s dialects. In relation to the diagenerational, young people preferred the Belem’s and local dialects, while adults preferred the local and Cearense dialects. Most informants did not notice the difference between open and closed vowels in two word sequences, however, preferred and claimed to speak the word sequences with closed vowels. The local and Belem inhabitants dialects have higher social status. The natives were more loyal to their dialect than the migrants.