Economy, society and the formation of Brazilian Portuguese: elements for a discussion on the sociolinguistic configurations of colonial Brazil

Abstract

The analysis of the inquisitorial sources bequeathed by the first two visitations of the Holy Office to Portuguese America (Lobo; Sartori, 2020; Lobo; Sartori; Mota, 2016; Siqueira, 1978) does not support the perspective of interpretation of the socioeconomic stratification of colonial Brazil in dichotomous terms –“casa-grande” versus “senzala” (Freyre, [1933] 2002) –, which has implications for the interpretation of the process of formation of BP and for understanding the current sociolinguistic configuration of the country. In addition to this point, another aspect that is rarely discussed is highlighted: the need to understand linguistic interactions within the different configuration patterns of the colonial family. The so-called sociolinguistic polarization (Lucchesi, 1994, 2015) of BP, so clear when contrasting the socioeconomic elite with the enslaved population, becomes a tangled web, if nuances that linguistic and cultural reality are put into analysis in the social and domestic sphere it sheltered. Based on Pagotto (2018), we propose to deepen the reflection on what interpretations engendered from the 1970s on the colonial economy and society reveal about the history of BP, highlighting the following points: the fact that the colonial economy cannot be understood through the reductionist vision of “cycles”; the fact that it was not limited to the agro-mineral-export model; the fact that it does not bear many similarities to the economy of regions such as the Caribbean and the South of the United States of America and, finally, the relevance of the role played by the internal market, more visible when considering the conquest and the colonization of the backlands (Santos, 2010).