A variação de primeira pessoa do plural nas revistas em quadrinhos do Chico Bento

Abstract

In Brazilian Portuguese there are two ways to express the plural first person: “nós/a gente” (matches we). When consulting the normative grammars (BECHARA, 2009; CUNHA & CINTRA, 2008; and ROCHA LIMA, 2013), we notice a lack of records of this variant, despite the fact that, increasingly, sociolinguistic research shows the increasing insertion of a gente in the pronominal system brazilian. Studies preceding ours with data from speech (OMENA, 1996; SEARA, 2000, TAMANINE, 2010; LOPES, 2003; MENDONÇA, 2010; FOEGER, 2014) indicate, in general, that we are facing an ongoing linguistic change. However, with regard to studies on this topic in written data, we noticed a lack of research, especially in comic books (MENON, LAMBACH & LANDARIN, 2003). As a result, we propose to analyze the variation and linguistic change of the first person plural in the comic books of Chico Bento, by Maurício de Souza, observing (1) the alternation between nós/a gente in all syntactic functions, (2) the alternation between nós/a gente in the subject function and (3) the verbal agreement of the first person plural. For that, we are based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Sociolinguistics Variation, by W. Labov (2008 [1972]) and, for the quantitative analysis of the data, we use GoldVarb X (SANKOFF; TAGLIAMONTE; SMITH 2005). We obtained the following results for the variation nós/a gente in all syntactic functions, in the child class magazines: a gente was favored in the non-subject functions, the past imperfect, the present equal to the past perfect and the present different from the past [-salient], the urban location speech and the decade and; in the teen class magazines: the past imperfect, the present equal to the past perfect and the present different from the past [-saliente] and the social group [República] favored the a gente. For variation in the subject function, in the child class magazines: the past imperfect, the present different from the past [-salient] and the present equal to the past, the generic reference, the social group [-power; -influence] and the urban environment favored a gente. For verbal agreement in the child class magazines: the most recent decades, the social group [+ power; + influence], female characters, the most prominent verbal forms and the characters of older age groups. In the Youth Class, the agreement was practically categorical with nós/a gente and there was no set of factors selected.