A geolinguística do falar içaense: os (des)caminhos de sua identidade

Abstract

This work studies the semantic-lexical variation of the Portuguese language spoken by people born and residing in Santo Antônio do Içá as compared to those who moved to Manaus—both cities in the state of Amazonas, northern Brazil. The research is based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions of dialectology (THUN, 2000), which uses linguistic geography as a scientific method (BRANDÃO, 1991) and is grounded on the theory of variationist sociolinguistics (LABOV, 2008 [1972]). The sample was stratified as per diatopic (geography), diagerational (age), and diasexual (sex) dimensions. At each point of inquiry, 6 informants were chosen, according to the criteria of the Linguistic Atlas of Amazonas (ALAM) (CRUZ, 2004): 3 men and 3 women born in Santo Antônio do Içá distributed among 3 age groups (18–35, 36–55, and 56+ years old). Participants ranged from unschooled to having completed middle school. Data were collected through targeted interviews. Semantic-lexical questionnaires were applied, comprising direct and indirect questions covering the following semantic fields: (I) physical environment, (II) biotic environment, and (III) anthropic environment. This allowed us to compare data and identify the most productive variants. The results confirmed our hypotheses. The lexicon of people born in Santo Antônio do Içá who had been living for more than 20 years in Manaus differed from the lexicon of those residing in their hometown. In addition, we found an influence of indigenous and Spanish languages in the lexicon of informants from Santo Antônio do Içá.