Urbanization and stylistic monitoring: Linguistic variation and the representations of rural speech in comic books

Abstract

Incontemporary Brazil, a strongly prejudiced speech around the rural speech and the culture that represents it. This is materialized in the dichotomy “right” and “wrong”, when comparing the rural oral uses of the language and that of the urban contexts. In this study, we aim to launch a new look at this issue from the urbanization and continuous stylistic monitoring proposed by Bortoni-Ricardo (2004, 2011). We used data extracted from the comic book editions with the Chico Bento character, by Maurício de Sousa, who supposedly “typify” the characteristics of the so-called rural speech. Confronting with research results on language variation in Brazilian Portuguese (BP),we could check if the language uses of the so-called rural speech of the Chico Bento character are marks of rural areas or if, in practice, it reflects the way of speaking of many Brazilians, regardless of geographical space to which they are associated.