Beliefs and attitudes of literate elite regarding variation in relativization strategies

Abstract

This study analyzes the results of two subjective evaluation tests concerning linguistic variables, applied to 36 individuals with at least a completed undergraduate degree. The participants were distributed by both sexes and three age groups in the cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. In the first test, participants were asked to evaluate sentences containing morphosyntactic variables of Brazilian Portuguese, classifying them as typical of a language that is: “too formal,” “formal,” “informal,” or “incorrect.” In the second test, participants were required to choose, for each presented sentence, a variant suitable for use in a formal communication situation (first part) and in an informal communication situation (second part). They were also asked to reject any form they deemed improper for use in that situation. Only the results from sentences focusing on the three relativization strategies in Brazilian Portuguese were analyzed: the standard strategy, the chopping strategy, and the resumptive pronoun strategy. The results revealed that the participants, all members of the country’s literate elite, highly value the variant prescribed by grammatical tradition, despite this strategy being virtually absent from their current language use. This highlights the strength of prescriptive ideology. The chopping strategy, in general, did not receive a negative evaluation, unlike the resumptive pronoun strategy. On the other hand, the study also identified two distinct profiles among the test participants: a conservative one, more aligned with the normative standard, and a more progressive one, not aligned with the normative standard. Finally, the study revealed the social characteristics associated with each of the two profiles.
Keywords: Literate elite. Relative clauses. Language beliefs and attitudes. Standard norm. Grammatical tradition.