Atlas Linguístico do centro-oeste Potiguar

Abstract

Language and its proper manners of speaking produce rich possibilities of language variations. It is also a historical and cultural patrimony of a society and it needs to be perpetuated though a registration process. Based on this presupposition, this research aims at elaborating a Center-West Rio Grande do Norte Region Atlas. In order to accomplish this purpose, a few goals were established to identify extralinguistic variations (diastropic, diasexual and diageneric) in phonetic and lexical phenomena. The main aim is to describe the real Portuguese language of Center-West of Rio Grande do Norte to identify phonetic, semantic and lexical phenomena, which characterize differentiations or can define Rio Grande do Norte State. This research has as theoretical and methodological foundations the Dialectology and Pluridimensional and Geolinguistic Relations (RADKE e THUN, 1996), in consonance, mainly, with the ideals of the Brazilian Atlas Project (Alib in Portuguese) and Rio Grande do Norte Atlas Linguistic Project (ALiRN in Portuguese). Considering socioeconomic and cultural data, eight places of inquiries were chosen: four in West Potiguar Mesoregion (Mossoró, Apodi, Pau dos Ferros and Janduís) and four in Central Potiguar Mesoregion (Macau, Angicos, Currais Novos and Caicó). The criteria for this choice was, firstly, the relevance of demographic, historical, geographic, political, economic and cultural aspects and theirs influence on cities of that regions. We also adopted an approximate equidistance criterion. It means that all places were distributed in way that all Potiguar Center West region could be considered, with a distance, among them, of at least, 70 km. In order to accomplish this field research, 32 informants were selected, taking into account: a) gender – in each location were interviewed two men and two women (a man and a woman of each generation), a total of 4 informants for place; b) age – were distributed in two generations: G1 (generation of young people from 18 to 32 years old) and G2 (generation of adults between 48 to 62 years old). In each location two informants were selected from G1 and two from G2; c) schooling – two informants were chosen with schooling equal or inferior to 9th year of Elementary School. To all those informants were applied two (phonetic-phonological and semantic-lexical) questionnaires with the aim of collecting data, providing, thus, an elaboration of 147 (84 lexical and 63 phonetic) linguistic charts which compose the Atlas and show the diversity of speaking of the region. This research brings meaningful contributions, considering that it records the existent linguistic richness in the researched location and allows the knowledge of linguistic reality that can be constantly accessed by, for example, teachers, taking into account the domains of prestigious varieties without prejudice to students’ speaking origin, contributing, thus, to an efficient and effective language teaching in the analyzed region.