A comparative analysis between 'Boroca' and 'Buckskin bag' on the lexical effervescence regarding the establishment of gold mines in Brazil and in the USA

Abstract

This paper addresses the significant influence of economic activities, such as “Gold Rush" or "Gold Fever”, in the United States, and the intense human movement caused by the discovery of "Serra Pelada”, in Brazil, on the language related to the economic context of the affected regions. "Newspaper Corpus from the Library of Congress" was used as a reference for the English term and the archive from Hemeroteca of the National Library was adopted for the Brazilian one. A comparative analysis was conducted between the words "Boroca" (Brazil) and "Buckskin bag" (USA), which refer to a type of bag used by the "garimpeiro" (Brazilian term) and "miner" (American term) to store and transport small gold nuggets. According to the results, gold extraction as an economic activity influences the media propagation of the terms "boroca" and "buckskin bag," revealing similar linguistic behaviors despite the temporal, geographical, and linguistic separation and highlighting the influence of economic activity on the language of society in the 19th and 20th centuries.