Abstract
AbstractThe aim of this paper is two-fold: first, it seeks to highlight the potential ofreturnemigrants — orhome-comers— to introduce lexical change in their first language (L1). Second, it represents a contribution to Lusophone linguistics and Romance linguistics more broadly in examining speech performance data from home-comers of an under-researched Portuguese variety, a dialect of Azorean Portuguese. Drawing on Backus’s notion ofentrenchment, I first present home-comers as a possible source of language change due to their contact with and potential use of L2 lexical items encountered abroad, and I highlight the Azores as an important yet overlooked site for language contact and change. In analyzing spontaneous oral narratives of emigration collected in the Azores, I demonstrate how home-comers’ ideological attitudes and linguistic resources serve as the ground on which linguistic changes occur. After examining the import of performance data on the individual level, I consider the status of a particular lexical category of code-switches — English discourse markers (i.e. ‘so’ and ‘you know’) — in Romance and their potential to become lexicalized and regarded as Portuguese in this particular contact situation.
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