Lexical and semantic variation in contemporary spoken Portuguese in urban Funchal and rural areas of Madeira Island

Naidea Nunes Nunes

doi:10.5334/jpl.250

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a dialectal and sociolinguistic approach and description of the use of the lexical and semantic regionalisms in contemporary spoken Portuguese in urban Funchal (the capital of Madeira) and in four rural areas of the island. The study of the lexicon and its semantic variation is based on recent samples of a semasiological questionnaire, applied to stratified informants by sex/gender, age group and level of education. The correlation of the results with the extralinguistic factors, geographical origin of the respondents on the island and sociocultural variables from the qualitative analysis and the quantitative point of view confirm that speakers from urban areas are less conservative than those from rural areas and showed flexibility and variability as well as stability of lexical meanings, two opposite and complementary lexicon characteristics. The traditional lexicon of Madeira studied highlights the coexistence of dialectal forms, some of them common to the Azores and Brazil, with European Portuguese standard variants. Therefore, the qualitative and the quantitative expression of the knowledge of Madeiran regionalisms and their lexical and semantic variations expose their vitality and support the heterogeneity of the European Portuguese language and the identity of the Portuguese spoken on Madeira Island.

Highlights

The main purpose of this paper is to study the lexical and semantic variation of some Madeiran regionalisms in contemporary spoken Portuguese, verifying the knowledge and the linguistic vitality of 39 words and one expression in urban Funchal and in four rural areas of the island
This paper aims to provide a dialectal and sociolinguistic approach and description of the use of the lexical and semantic regionalisms in contemporary spoken Portuguese in urban Funchal and in four rural areas of the island
The qualitative and the quantitative expression of the knowledge of Madeiran regionalisms and their lexical and semantic variations expose their vitality and support the heterogeneity of the European Portuguese language and the identity of the Portuguese spoken on Madeira Island

Summary

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to study the lexical and semantic variation of some Madeiran regionalisms in contemporary spoken Portuguese, verifying the knowledge and the linguistic vitality of 39 words and one expression in urban Funchal (capital of Madeira) and in four rural areas of the island. The phenomenon of knowledge and use of regionalisms in spoken Portuguese on the island of Madeira, such as non-standard vocabulary, is directly related to extralinguistic or geographical and sociocultural variables. Nunes: Lexical and semantic variation in contemporary spoken Portuguese in urban Funchal and rural areas of Madeira Island of spoken Portuguese in Madeira Island (urban vs rural) and sociocultural (sex/gender, age group and level of education) variation in the knowledge of Madeiran regionalisms. The internal variables studied are lexical forms and semantic variation of the words, describing their variability and flexibility, as well as stability

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Conclusion