Language issues in Brazil's nineteenth century society

Abstract

In this study we have analyzed the Brazilian educated social groups’ linguistic uses in late 19th Century and early 20th Century, as well as the social, political and cultural elements that promoted a social-linguistic stratification in the post-independence society. With that, we have considered the restructuring processes of the national elites during the constitution of the Brazilian State amidst all struggles to consolidate the nationalities, especially when it comes to actions in favor of the Brazilian linguistic autonomy. Under a strictly linguistic perspective, we have investigated the pronominal clitics placement’s patterns (cf. SANTOS SILVA, 2012; OLIVEIRA, 2011, 2013). The results of the present study emphasize the formation of different varieties of Brazilian Portuguese standards, emanated from distinctive collective uses and legitimized by the same educated elites. These results show the effects of a process that exists not due to the imposition of modern European Portuguese, but rather by the adjustment of socially valued linguistic uses to the Brazilian socio-cultural and political realities.