Linguistic varieties in the educational book Português – linguagens: a sociolinguistic approach

Abstract

The educational book (re)produces linguistic ideologies and assumes an important role, as it is used as the main resource in the Portuguese Language teaching. In this work we object to analyze a teaching proposal in the treatment given to the linguistic variation in the Portuguese Educational book Português: Linguagens of the authors William Roberto Cereja and Thereza Cochar Magalhães. In this regard, we attempt to the manner how the linguistic varieties are worked. Thus, we dialogue with the studies of Labov (2008), Tarallo (2005), Hernández Campoy and Almeida (2005), Fernández (1998), Bagno (2008), Lucchesi (2015), Milroy (2011) and Moita Lopes (2013). The analysis reveals that there is still a limitation in the treatment of linguistic varieties, and it focus only on those ones that are used by poor populations. Besides, the teaching proposal comes from the social-linguistic polarizations: the right and the wrong, the cult and the uneducated (the hick) variations. Besides, the educational book focus on the grammatical corruption as a teaching resource used for the teaching of linguistic variation and assumes the pattern norms of the language for, from it, concepting other variations as being irrelevant, vulgar and hick. This treatment (re)produces and makes strong social and linguistic prejudices, once that reproduces, without questions, some paradigms, in a specific manner, it naturalizes the sociolinguistic polarization. It is clear, however, that the ideological force of the standard language might create an image of the elite´s language, one that guarantees the acquisition of symbolic benefits.