Representações sociais de Língua Portuguesa no Facebook

Abstract

This research deals with the Social Representations of the Portuguese Language on a page of the social network Facebook called the Portuguese Language (https://www.facebook.com/Portugueselanguage07/), aimed at discussing and disseminating the Portuguese language in Brazil, in order to examine how the contents are expressed and discussed based on posts and, therefore, comments by internet users. As a theoretical-methodological framework, we rely on studies that contemplate cyberspace and cyberculture, (Lévy, 2003); in the sociodiscursive view of language (Bakhtin / Voloshinov, 1997); and in the Theory of Social Representations (Moscovici, 1978). With a qualitative bias, this proposal is part of the “most recent aspect of linguistic research, which adopts a more critical approach to the language data of new media” (Barton & Lee, 2015), supported by the concepts of sociology and linguistic ideology. The analysis procedures were based on the interpretation device of Spink (1994) and Crusoé (2004). The linguistic materiality, or “trails” (Recuero, 2009), corresponds to posts and comments collected through screen capture, Print Screan key (Prt Sc) and comment clippings. Social Representations were categorized into three dimensions: cognitive/practical, affective, and power/resistance. To prepare the maps, we use the Cmps software. The outcomes indicate a strong presence of normative grammar guiding Social Representations, reverberating in expressions that oscillate between pride, patriotism, sadness and humiliation or hatred to the mother tongue, but there is also love, affection, longing and combative stance in the face of social inequalities and linguistic prejudice.