Medial unstressed vowels in northwestern of Sao Paulo: the role of social variable on vowel raising

In this paper, we investigate to which extent social variables act on the medial vowel raising phenomenon in the Portuguese variety spoken in Sao Jose do Rio Preto, a city in the countryside of Sao Paulo State. Based on the theoretical-methodological model of Sociolinguistics Variacionist, we analys...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inLetras de hoje Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 315 - 324
Main Authors Pavezi, Vanessa Cristina, Tenani, Luciani, Goncalves, Sebastiao Carlos Leite
Format Journal Article
LanguagePortuguese
Published 01.07.2012
Subjects
Brazilian Portuguese
Cities
Education
Linguistics
Phonological Analysis
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Social Pressure
Sociolinguistics
Sociophonetics
Speech Communities
Stress
Vowels
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0101-3335

Cover

More Information
Summary:In this paper, we investigate to which extent social variables act on the medial vowel raising phenomenon in the Portuguese variety spoken in Sao Jose do Rio Preto, a city in the countryside of Sao Paulo State. Based on the theoretical-methodological model of Sociolinguistics Variacionist, we analyse speech samples from this city, the Iboruna database. The results show that the vowel raising applies: (i) for both men and women; (ii) in all age groups and, (iii) in all levels of formal education. Taking into consideration the results of analysis of social and linguistic variables selected by the program GoldVarb, we find evidences that vowel raising phenomenon is not sensitive to social pressures in the speech community studied, which allows us to affirm that it is not a phenomenon socially stigmatized and the variation in its implementation is more strongly subject to linguistic variables. Adapted from the source document.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0101-3335