A variação entre os pronomes de primeira pessoa do plural nós e a gente numa amostra da literatura infantojuvenil gaúcha

Abstract

The distance between the use of the innovative pronoun a gente on spoken language and its usage on written language is widely recognized. There are several researches on what concerns the use of a gente within the spoken language, however, on written language, the referred pronoun has still been little investigated, particularly from a sociolinguistic perspective. For this reason, the current work aims at clarifying the entry path of the innovative pronoun a gente on written language, in this case, through literary production for the gaúcho infant-juvenile public. In view of this, I intend to show if there were a great use of the first-person plural pronoun a gente in infant-juvenile literature produced in the State of Rio Grande do Sul throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. As for the writers dedicated to the aforementioned public, in all, we consulted ten authors, namely: Charles Kiefer, Cláudio Levitan, Diana Noronha, Jane Tutikian, Luís Dill, Lygia Bojunga Nunes, Marcelo Carneiro da Cunha, Moacyr Scliar, Sérgio Caparelli e Walmir Ayala. Among several research methodologies which could be used for the analysis and generation of date, I adopted, since the beginning of the research, the method of data quantifying for allowing the comparison between the new pronoun a gente and the canonic pronoun nós within the scope of linguistic and social variables selected for this research. Only this way it will be possible to demonstrate if there was growth in the use of the new pronoun. Moreover, I draw from excerpts of the works consulted in order to serve as examples of the cases evidenced in this study. The analysis is supported by the Variation and Change Theory proposed by Labov (1972) and takes into account the influence of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors on the conditioning of the forms in variation. The general results point out to an effective use of the new pronoun a gente on gaucho infant-juvenile literature as we can see from the results obtained in the rounds that were carried out with the help of the Varbrul Statistical Program. We have verified the following linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts as favoring the use of a gente in the writing of narratives: (i) character’s profession, (ii) character’s age, (iii) narrator type, (iv) character’s social class, (v) formal parallelism. This scenery indicates that the change which introduces the innovative form in the pronominal system is at a very advanced stage considering the sample of gaúcho infant-juvenile literature due to the high percentage and relative weights found in this study. Finally, the main authors who contributed to this research were: Borges (2004), Zilles (2007), Brustolin (2009) and Labov (1972).