A linguagem regional-popular nos romances de Rachel de Queiroz

Abstract

This study uses the seven novels, by the author Rachel de Queiroz (1910-2003): O Quinze (1930), João Miguel (1932), Caminhos de Pedra (1937), as Três Marias (1939), O Galo de Ouro (1950), Dôra, Doralina (1975), and Memorial de Maria Moura (1992) with the objective of identifying and describing the regional lexicon from the Brazilian Northeast, especially, from Ceará, the state where she was born. Such objective was justified by the author's own words who said, in several occasions, that her characters, although they are fictional, they are representative of the Northeast culture, and that they also refer to characteristics of the people from her social life. The investigation of Rachel de Queiroz's work, in a linguistic perspective, is quite relevant due to the fact that this author presents in her writing a set of works composed greatly of ordinary language from the Northeast. This language is presented through countless regionalisms, which encompass words and expressions and proverbs. All this richness in ways of speaking may be found, mainly, in her novels, since it was exactly, through this literary genre, that Rachel de Queiroz expressed the dramatic situation of men in the dry and poor lands of the Northeast. In the composition of a literary work, the lexicon assumes an important role in the sense of that it provides us with a monitoring process of advance and transformation of language integrated in the culture of a people. For that, this research will be conducted in the prospect of theoretical principles of Lexicology and Lexicography, based on Aragão (2006), Krieger et al (2006), Biderman (2001), Isquerdo (1998), and Barbosa (1991), in order to produce a glossary with lexical regional unities presented in Rachel de Queiroz's novels. We believe that this perspective of research is relevant to Linguistic studies, since it treats of a social and ethnolinguistic research, which investigates the linguistic variation in its social context, more particularly, concerning the linguistic process and the Northeastern regional culture, inserted in the glossary, as a way of giving contribution to some gaps in the area of Lexicology and Lexicography, specially, the regional one, and to Rachel de Queiroz's literary criticism.