Sociolinguística e ensino de língua portuguesa: constatações no município de Juiz de Fora (MG)

Abstract

The Sociolinguistic shows that variations happen in all levels of a tongue and help us to understand the transformations that occur in a natural language. The Sociolinguistic, applied to Portuguese language teaching, represents the main subject of this research. In theoretical scope, the major contributions come from the studies of William Labov (1966; 1972; 1975; 1983; 1987). Nowadays in Brazil, this source has bigger reach with the research undertaken by a considerable number of scholars (BAGNO; 2002; 2006; 2007; 2010; BORTONIRICARDO, 2004; 2005; 2011; CASTILHO, 2010; FARACO, 2008; PERINI; 2010). It is observed, in sociolinguistic literature focused to native tongue teaching, that the dichotomist vision of ‘right or wrong tongue’ taught in schools must be avoided to prevent children deconstruct positive view of the linguistic variations and to not distance the teaching act of the ideals of an education that could offer these students communication resources that make possible to interact in different contexts of their social life. At the same time, encourage the respect for any variation in their own language and suppress the linguistic prejudice that still prevails in society. According to these presuppositions, this research inquires if Portuguese language teaching in Juiz de Fora (state of Minas Gerais, Brazil) is worked based on those sociolinguistic principles and if the linguistic variations are considered in classroom. An ethnographic qualitative investigation in education was developed (ANDRÉ, 2000) in four schools of Juiz de Fora. Portuguese tongue classes were observed and teachers were submitted to interviews during each period of observation. It was concluded that Portuguese language teaching based on pedagogy of variation is still far from reality in classrooms. Even though there are exceptions, those are a clear minority that works under sociolinguistic view, with though turned to language structure contrasts. By comparing the interviews with the teachers’ action, it is evident the difficulty of didactics transposition of the speeches. Although touched by the sociolinguistic theory about variations, the teachers still incur in inadequate corrections on the students speech, result of idealized vision of language that still prevails in most Brazilian schools. Those results endorse, so, the necessity to include sociolinguistic as required course for teachers’ training, changing the treatment of the language to teach native tongue using the pedagogy of variation and by investing in an education that respects the linguistic variety and their users in special.