Social and stylistic variation in the use of phonetic variants of Fortalezense Portuguese 'para'

Authors

  • Michael Gradoville Spelman College Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i4.25819

Keywords:

Brazilian Portuguese, phonetic reduction, para, social variation, language change

Abstract

This paper investigates the social variation surrounding the phonetic variants of para ‘to, for, in order to’ in the educated spoken Portuguese of the city of Fortaleza, Brazil. Through two quantitative analyses of a 75-speaker corpus of the educated spoken Portuguese of 1990’s Fortaleza, the evidence presented shows that the reduction of para to p(r)a was increasing during the period in question from already high rates to near-categoricity in the youngest generation represented. A strong effect is also found for linguistic style where unreduced para, to a great extent, occurs in the niche of formal speech. With respect to the variation surrounding the complex onset in p(r)a, other social attributes are key. In particular, women are significantly less likely than men to use non-rhotic pa, which seems to owe to pa’s relative unacceptability in Brazilian society, although no predictor has any particularly strong effect on this process.

Author Biography

  • Michael Gradoville, Spelman College
    Michael Gradoville is a Lecturer of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Literature. He holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics and general Linguistics from Indiana University, as well as an MA in Hispanic Linguistics, a BA in Spanish and Portuguese, and a BBA in Management Information Systems from the University of New Mexico. His research focuses on variation and change in Spanish and Portuguese.

Published

2015-11-30

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Gradoville, M. (2015). Social and stylistic variation in the use of phonetic variants of Fortalezense Portuguese ’para’. Sociolinguistic Studies, 9(4), 373-398. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i4.25819