Uso dos pronomes mim e eu na posição de sujeito em frases infinitivas iniciadas pela preposição para: o que pensam os falantes universitários do sertão alagoano

Abstract

In this sociolinguistic research, we analyze what the university speakers of the Alagoano backwoods think about the uses of the pronouns eu and mim in the subject position in infinitive phrases initiated by the preposition para. In order to develop our work, we use the assumptions of the Theory of Variation and Linguistic Change related to the problem of evaluation (LABOV, 2008 [1972]) that seeks to verify how the speakers evaluate certain linguistic forms, which can receive negative or positive value based on the speech community. To do this, we performed the data collection through an interview questionnaire applied at the Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL) / Campus Sertão with a view to perceive what evaluation university speakers make about the phenomenon under study. The data analysis was performed using graphs that show us the percentages of choice between one variant and the other. In addition, we’ve also analyzed the subjective responses of the informants in order to verify what values the variants eu and mim receive in this speech community and whether there is stigmatization regarding the use of the non-standard variant mim. Thus, according to the results obtained, we found that: i) university speakers from the Alagoano backwoods believe that they use the pronoun eu in the subject position in infinitive phrases initiated by the preposition para, especially since it is contemplated by normative grammar; ii) there are social stereotypes regarding the use of variants eu and mim, being eu the prestigious form and mim the variant stigmatized by the speech community; and iii) by receiving negative evaluation, speakers using the pronoun mim as subject of infinitives phrases suffer stigmatization and linguistic prejudice.