Representação linguística de personagens em telenovelas: caricatura ou identificação?

Abstract

The research analyzes the speech of television characters, in order to observe how the different varieties are represented, specially the “non-standard” variety, and how acts this representation: if corroborates the perpetuation of linguistic prejudice or shows linguistic identities close to the real. The characters take place at different points in the urbanization continuum proposed by Bortoni-Ricardo (2009), and integrating the soap opera “O Sétimo Guardião” and the macrosserie “Verdades Secretas”, both felt in prime time on Brazilian television. The soap opera was our choice because it is an instrument of national reach, which a large majority of Brazilians has is a passionate relationship, a feeling that is expressive for evaluations of all kinds. In this paper, we are interested in how representation may or may not lead to the stigma of speakers, since, by hypothesis, we believe that the linguistic characterization of these characters, as it happens, delegitimizes them, creating caricatures. The search, of a qualitative-interpretative nature, is based on Sociolinguistic theory, especially in theorists such as Labov (1974; 2006; 2008 [1972]; Pagotto (2004), Bortoni-Ricardo (2009;2011) and Bagno (2015).The results show that, in the novel O Sétimo Guardião, there is a caricaturization in a character, which can perpetuate the prejudice against the rural variety, and in the macroserie Verdades Secretas, the characters maintain a variety more faithful to reality, but scenes and speeches can serve as an incentive to discrimination due to the linguistic factor, corroborating Bagno's (2015) view that prejudice, far beyond linguistic, is social.