Aspectos linguísticos e socioculturais dos neologismos na obra literária Estórias abensonhadas, de Mia Couto

Abstract

In this thesis, we present the results of a research aimed at analyzing the forms and meanings of neologisms contained in the novel Estórias abensonhadas, by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto. We extracted all the occurrences of neologisms from the novel, classified them according to their lexical configuration, analyzed their meanings in the linguistic context and interpreted these meanings considering the sociocultural dimension of the work’s production. The compilation of the extraction corpus and the exclusion corpus, the latter composed by the Dicionário online Priberam and the Vocabulário Ortográfico Moçambicano da Língua Portuguesa, was designed according to the theoretical and methodological concepts of Lexicology (ALVES, 2006, 1996; BARBOSA, 2007, 1996; BASÍLIO, 2010; BIDERMAN, 2001, 1999; CABRÉ, 2004; CORREIA; ALMEIDA, 2012), as well as the classification of neologisms. In addition, we based the analysis of neologisms in the linguistic and sociocultural contexts of production and the formulation and delimitation of the semantic-cultural fields that these neologisms comprise on the premises of Semantics of Contexts and Scenarios (FERRAREZI JÚNIOR, 2019, 2018), Sociolinguistics (CALVET, 2002; CAMACHO, 2013) and Ethnolinguistics (CAMACHO, 2018; COSERIU, 1981). We detected 366 neologisms formed by different word-formation processes established in linguistic tradition, such as derivation, compounding, truncation, lexical crossing and lexical blending. However, the particularity of the data demanded a proposal to define and classify three new types of word-formation processes: detachment, intralexical insertion and intralexical substitution. These last two terms define neologisms formed on the basis of lexical units which share the usual meanings and specialize them in particular communicative situations. The analysis showed that neologisms attribute to the texts expressive and stylistic effects in the contexts that they occur, but also denote sociocultural realities of a country experiencing a process of reconstruction. The language used in the novel has a denotative function to expose a historical reality and a reality built according to the perspective of the Mozambican man. In this sense, neologisms are part of several semantic-cultural fields related to events, attitude, activities, body, space, humans, imagination, identity and memory, nature, psychological, social relations, social status and tradition.