SEARCH FOR NATIONAL SOCIOLINGUISTIC IDENTITY RECOGNITION: A DISCUSSION ON VARIABLE PHENOMENA OF BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese, the national language,spoken and used in Brazil, has its socio-historical originst i ed  to European Por tugue s e .  The   e s tabl i shment  of  astandard norm (grammar) took as its basis the manner ofspeaking and writing of the Portuguese. Although thedi f f e r enc e s  be twe en  the   two  language s  ar e   c l ear  andperceived by both peoples, Brazilians still learn, wrongly,rules related to the language spoken in Portugal, leavinga s i d e   f e a t u r e s   a n d  ma r k   t h a t   r e p r e s e n t   t h e   n a t i o n a lsociolinguistic identity. This research investigates andfeatures, considering the attitude of the speakers in front ofthe variable phenomena of the Portuguese language, aspectsof the Brazilian spoken language that points to possibletraces of a Brazilian sociolinguistic identity. The researchwas exploratory and quantitative, with the theoretical andmethodological model of the variationist Sociolinguistics. Linguistic recognition tests were used in order to promotethe evaluation, the recognition and the appreciation oflanguage varieties in Brazil. It was found in this work thatthe selected educated speakers showed an awareness of thee s s e n t i a l   q u e s t i o n   o f   r e c o g n i z i n g   t h i s   B r a z i l i a nsoc iol ingui s t i c   ident i t y,   e valuat ing and  judging  somevariable phenomena of Brazilian Portuguese as their closestlinguistic repertoire in less monitored speech situations.This contributes even more to an actual awareness of theexistence and recognition of a language that might beBrazilian in the future.