Mário de Andrade: A folk (socio)linguist

Abstract

This study was inspired by Paveau’s article (2018) on folk linguistics and on the abilities of non-linguists to produce linguistic knowledge.   The author abandons the Cartesian binarism – linguists versus nonlinguists – and proposes a continuum which goes from the professional linguist to the ordinary man. It was impossible, at the time of reading that article, not to think of Mário de Andrade as a folk linguist. He was keen to establish a Brazilian linguistic norm, formally consistent with the national literary expression hitherto hostage of the Lusitanian grammar pattern. In a globalizing vision, the modernist writer endeavored to capture the average speech of Brazilians through the Gramatiquinha project, which would identify rural and urban speakers from the various regions of the country and from all social classes. In the continuum proposed by Paveau (2018), there is a place for writers and essayists who make descriptions and interventions in the standard linguistic norms. It is, therefore, in this perspective that  this paper sets out to provide reflections on Mário’s utterances which make him a kind of sociolinguist avant la lettre.