Variation of second-person singular subject pronouns in poesia acústica songs: a sociofunctional analysis of the influence of the gender variable
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2026.v22n1a72230Abstract
This study aims to investigate second-person singular pronominal variation among the pronouns “tu”, “você” and “cê” functioning as subjects in the songs of the Poesia Acústica project, examining the role of the gender variable. The research is grounded in the sociofunctional perspective, integrating assumptions from Variationist Sociolinguistics (Labov, 2008[1972]) and North American Functionalism (Givón, 1995), which consider both linguistic and social constraints in the constitution of grammar. It also engages with gender studies that discuss the relationship between social roles, discursive performances, and linguistic practices (Ribeiro, 2018). We start from the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the variation of second-person singular subject pronouns and the gender variable, reflecting identity and discursive constructions. The corpus consists of all the songs from the project, in which occurrences of the pronouns were identified and classified. The methodology is both qualitative and quantitative, seeking to map usages on a case-by-case basis and also to systematize and tabulate them using Microsoft 365, specifically Excel. Our results indicate significant differences between genders, suggesting that pronominal variation in this corpus also operates as a discursive strategy linked to the artists’ identities and performances.
Keywords: Pronominal variation of second-person singular forms. subject. Sociofunctionalism. Gender. Poesia Acústica.
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