(SOCIO)LINGUISTICS EVALUATIONS ON LUDOVICENSES SPEECH

Abstract

This work, based on the theoretical-methodological Variationist Sociolinguistics assumptions (WEINREICH, LABOV, HERZOG, 2006 [1968]; LABOV, 2006 [1966]; 2008 [1972]; ECKERT, 2012; OUSHIRO, 2015, among others), proposes a review of metacomments about the Ludovicense variety with the aim to access which evaluations emerge from the discourse of speakers regarding the discourse that Maranhenses speak the best variation of Brazilian Portuguese, focusing on the analysis of linguistic variable, singular second person pronouns, in particular the realization of the personal pronoun "tu"; which is responsible, to some extent, in maintaining speech that Maranhenses speak the best Portuguese. A preliminary qualitative analysis was done using audios and transcripts of 26 sociolinguistic interviews that make up the Ludovicense speech sample constructed by Santos (2015). The preliminary results show that Ludovicenses produced many metacomments about their way of speaking and showed evidence of the belief that Maranhenses, mainly Ludovicenses, speak good Portuguese. In addition, they presented the use of the pronoun "tu" as a Ludovicense mark.