Comparative analysis of pronouns from Portuguese language grammars

a sociolinguistic approach

Abstract

Despite several findings in the field of Linguistics related to variation made primarily by Sociolinguistics, the adopted concepts in language teaching are commonly anchored to normative grammar as the only reference. Thus, this teaching raises classifications and analyses that do not necessarily reflect on the real uses of the language, generating some misunderstandings such as the interpretation that language users do not know how to speak Portuguese. Considering the problem, this research aimed to comparatively analyze the grammar of Terra (1989) and Bagno (2013), focusing on the grammatical class of pronouns. To address the theoretical aspects that conduct this study, we approached the postulates of Antunes (2007), Bagno (2007; 2012), Bortoni-Ricardo (2005), Brasil (1998), Campos (2014), Faraco (2008), Gagné (2002), Silva (2009), amongst others. The results indicated differences between the real and ideal uses of the pronouns recommended by descriptive and prescriptive grammars, respectively. We concluded that there are different contexts in which these uses become appropriate, assuming that is school’s responsibility to assist students with their stylistic monitoring.