The capixaba accent

a study of perception

Abstract

Since the 2000s, we have carried out variationist research with the aim of describing and analyzing the speech of people born and residing in Vitória, capital of Espírito Santo, in the project “Portuguese spoken in the city of Vitória” (PortVix) (cf. YACOVENCO et al. , 2012). However, there are still many concerns regarding the identification of identity traits of the capixabas. The question in this scenario is: do you recognize a capixaba by his speech? To answer this question, we carried out a perception study to verify if the capixaba would have a defined linguistic identity, verifying if Brazilians can recognize capixaba by speech. In this article, we intend to present the results obtained through an online form. We analyzed the responses of 1432 participants regarding the following questions: i) Can you recognize a capixaba?; ii) Do you think that people from Espírito Santo have an accent?; iii) Could you give examples of the capixaba accent?; iv) For you, what characterizes the capixaba accent? In general, the results demonstrate that the Espírito Santo accent is perceived, but the linguistic identification is closely linked to typical expressions and prosodic aspects. In addition, several participants pointed out as a characteristic a possible mixture of accents, mainly from the neighboring states – Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Bahia.