Was There an Ítalo-paulistano Dialect?

Abstract

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the existence of an ítalo-paulistano dialect or ítalo-paulista dialect started to be discussed. References to such a dialect, however, are almost always linked to a genre of comic texts published in the São Paulo periodical press, mainly of the character Juó Bananére. This article analyzes the meanings present in the “ítalo-paulistano dialect” and how we can understand the relationship between the speech of Italian immigrants of São Paulo and this stylized representation. In this sense, we critically explored its use, from the writers of that time to the most recent historical and linguistic studies. The basis of the analysis are the Bakhtinian concepts of refraction, which points out how much the ideological works are not a simple reflection of reality, and discursive genre, which connects the formal characteristics of a given language style to the situation of social interaction where this style emerges. Thus, looking at the ítalo-paulistano dialect represented in fictional texts as a documentary record of a social language, ignoring the processes of adaptation to gender, distorts our perception of the linguistic reality of Ítalo-Paulistanos. On the other hand, the identity boundaries demarcated in these speeches are quite revealing of the social tensions present in the context of Italian immigration.