CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL MEANING OF THE VARIATION OF SECOND-PERSON SINGULAR PRONOUNS: MARANHAO’S AND BRASILIA’S VARIE

Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese has at least four pronominal constructions to address interlocutor synthesized in Scherre et al. (2015) that, based on several studies, propose the organization of a second-person singular pronominal map. Among the varieties that compose it, Sao Luis/Maranhao (ALVES, 2010, 2015) has recorded 39% of tu in geolinguistic interviews and 83% of tu in recordings of non-hidden spontaneous conversations. Brasilia/Federal District had records 72% of tu in hidden spontaneous conversations, (LUCCA, 2005); 12% in non-hidden spontaneous conversations (DIAS, 2007); and 31% in motivated sociolinguistic interviews (ANDRADE, 2015). Based on these results, we focus on second-person pronouns, especially tu in the Maranhao’s and Brasilia’s varieties, pointing out the social meanings of pronominal variation, with reflections on the type of data collection, parallel to the classic sociolinguistic variables such as age group, sex and years of schooling of the speakers.