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Variação e mudança linguística: panorama e perspectivas da sociolinguística variacionista no Brasil

2012; Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística; Volume: 8; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5007/1984-8412.2011v8n2p187

1984-8412

Ana Cristina Biondo Salomão,

Multilingual Education and Policy

Since the 1970s many research groups have emerged in Brazil in the area of Sociolinguistics, seeking to investigate language in relation to social factors that distinguish different speech communities to deconstruct the idea of linguistic homogeneity. Many of the works have been based on variationist sociolinguistics (LABOV, 2008 [1972]), for which variation and change are inherent to languages, i.e., heterogeneous structures are part of the speakers’ linguistic competence, as a cultural phenomenon motivated by linguistic and extralinguistic factors. Our aim, in this article, is to address the paths of Sociolinguistics since its beginning as a science, focusing mainly on the variationist strand, by recalling its key-concepts and methodology, and to present an overview of the research works conducted in Brazil in this field nowadays.