Construction of Identities in European Portuguese

Introduction

This essay serves to analyse the use of pronouns in the Portuguese language, particularly the European Portuguese dialect, and how speakers construct their identities, communicate their social class and their relation to others with their choice of pronouns and way of addressing other individuals. In order to help unfold and support these arguments, multiple key concepts such as ideology, identity and social class will further along be introduced and explored. Previous studies in the matter will also be introduced to help support this essays’ argument.

This essay will start with the introduction of concepts and key terms relevant to the essay, as well as some context to non-Portuguese speakers.

To help demonstrate and support the theory this essay is defending, a clip from a Portuguese YouTube show and a Twitter account, particularly two tweets, where the use of the plural second person is used to communicate social class, will be thoroughly analysed using as resource a linguistic method.

Theorical Analysis

• Context

As linguists, we are interested in the study of addressing forms in a more pragmatic perspective, meaning the conditions in which these forms are used and its correlation with the linguistic variation in general. When approached in a pragmatic perspective, the addressing forms seem to create an evident overlap of anthropologic and linguistic visions, showing that in the study of languages and humanities, there is no easy or productive way to clearly separate both disciplines. So as Sociolinguistics, we base ourselves on the fact that human societies are internally differentiated at a broad level, making possible the categorisation of people (Kerswill, 2006).

In Portuguese, contrary to the English language, there are two singular pronouns to address an individual. In English, the use of “you” can be for one or many persons. “Thou” is almost exclusively used in prayers and poetry, but it was used, in the past, as a familiar form to address a single person, making ‘you’ a more polite and distanced form. (Brown and Gilman, 1968).

In this Latin language, both ‘você’ and ‘tu’ are the correct words for ‘you.’ The complexity that these pronouns create have been recognised by multiple scholars. Duarte (1986) says that the ways we address someone is implicated by not only linguistic matters but also the addressee, the speaker’s politeness, the addresses’ title, and the firsts’ necessity to commit a face-threatening act. To follow these, the speaker needs to consider the social class differences, age gap and their closeness to the person who they are speaking to.

This would be the most simplistic way to explain these pronouns to a Portuguese learner but there is a lot to unwrap as to when and why to use each of these. This study will be refereeing uniquely to the European Portuguese use of these words as in other Portuguese speaking countries, such as Brazil, where the standard word for ‘You’ is solemnly ‘você,’ this study would not apply.

In opposition to the English language, in the Portuguese language, verbs have their own form depending on the subject. These are called first, second and third person in singular and plural form. Therefore, each verb has six different forms to each pronoun.

Although both “tu” and “você” are second singular person, “você” would adhere to the third plural person verb conjugation, changing not only the pronoun but also completely altering the phrase construction. This makes it imperial for the speaker to make a choice when addressing someone else. We will further discuss what this choice then implicates and weights in an interaction.

• Theory

Intimacy is a fundamental aspect of how we relate to others in social settings (Pei and Jurgens, 2020). There are codes in language that cue social information, not only the conversation topics but also linguistic methods and its choice.

Cintra (1986) created 3 levels as a means to identify the correct way to address someone according to their relationship. They described “você” has the intermediate level, an unique and complex one. According to them, “você” would be used in an interaction between individuals from similar status when there is no intimacy between them; or in a different situation when there is a disparity in the status of the individuals involved although this would only be used from a superior to an inferior hierarchy.

Despite all of this, ‘você’ is also used in an intimate context in certain social classes (high ones).

Brown & Gilman (1960) defend that the ways you treat someone are the reflection of social interactions that are characterised by power relations. It is important to mention that portuguese speakers might ask you “Posso tratar por tu?”, which translates to “Can I address (you) by ‘tu’?”, asking for permission for an intimacy than some people might take as disrespect since, as explained, this type of addressing is sometimes taken for respect and power.

Guilhermo & Bermejo (2015) also defend that the use of “você” is marked by its neutrality and heterogenic character, by its multiple contexts of use in assimetrical relations, intimicy between higher classes and between considerative equals.

Data Analysis

• YouTube video – Erro Crasso

Erro Crasso T1 Ep3 - LILI CANEÇAS explica o seu instagram, conta que tem um stalker e é seduzida.

Face-to-face conversation is the most basic and pervasive form of language and as so, conversation analysis includes all forms of talk-in-interaction (Llamas, 2008). Knowing and being aware that their speech is under analysis, humans will become self counscious and may, unintentionally, contamine data.

The next section of this essay will be analysing a video of a portuguese YouTube comedy show. For context, the hosts of this show are Luis Franco-Bastos and Pedro Teixeira da Mota, two comediants of 29 and 23 years of age and every episode they bring a portuguese celebrity to join them and interact in a variety of segments. In this episode, they will be joined by a 73 year-old socialite. Throught the 17 minute episode, the individuals talk to each other back and forth. By analysing the transcript, it is safe to say there is a pattern in the way the participants address each other.

Both Luis and Pedro address Lili by her name throughout the entire episode, avoyding the use of pronouns to refer to their guest. Despite this, their interaction can still be analysed since, as mentioned before, in the Portuguese language, verbs have to be in accordance to their subject so it is possible to analyse their speech in this way.

Some of the phrases in the transcript for analysis:

A) “Lili Caneças, muito obrigado por ter vindo. Seja muito bem vinda ao nosso programa.”

Translation: “Lili Caneças, thank (you) so much for coming. Welcome to our show”

B) “Como é que conseguiu”

Translation: “How did you manage”

In the minute 0.56 of the video (A), Luís thanks Lili for coming to the show. In this simple sentence, there are clues on the relationship between these individuals. The choice that Luís does when using “ter”, the third singular person form of the verb ‘have’. This continues when Luís chooses “Seja” instead of the second singular person conjugation of the verb. In a matter of seconds and by the choise of Luís’ words, it is possible to guess the relationship between the intervinents. Once again (B) (1.51), Luís talks to Lili conjugating the verb “manage” in the third singular person and omiting any pronoun in his speech.

C) “Também estou desempregada como tu mas (...)”

Translation: “I am also unemployed like you but (...)”

D) “Não é da tua geração”

Translation: “It is not from your generation”

E) “Não estava aqui a falar contigo e com o Pedro”

Translation: “E would not be here talking to you and Pedro”

Lili only recurs to the second singular pronoun in her conversation with Luís and Pedro. “Tu” (C – minute 1.05), “Tua” and “Contigo”, all these being pronouns that implicate the use of an informal approach to address the others, younger participants.

F) “Estive a observá-la. É daqui da zona?

Translation: “I have been watching (you). Are (you) from the area?”

In the minute 13.33 (F), Pedro also addresses Lili using the third singular person conjugation of the verbs. Pedro, like Luís, omits the use of pronouns to address the guess.

“The power semantic is similarly nonreciprocal, the superior says T and receives V” explains Brown and Gilman, refering to “tu” as T and V as “você”. And this conversation definitely supports this statement.

It is safe to say then that the way the three individuals address each other is then coherent throughout the video. Lili, being over 4 decades older than the other two intervinents, is in a position of higher hierarchy and therefore, is allowed to be less informal to them, while Luís and Pedro address Lili in a more formal way, recuring to the third person and choosing the most neutral path that the portuguese languages allows him.

• Twitter – O Beto de Cascais

https://twitter.com/BetoDeCascais/status/1338604123701338113 https://twitter.com/BetoDeCascais/status/1340744963227852803

As mentioned earlier, the use of third person is also very common to represent social rank. People from higher classes will use them in a more intimate context, including in a conversation with their children.

The next section of this essay will be analyzing two posts on Twitter from an account called “Beto de Cascais” which translates to ‘Posh from Cascais’. This is an account to mock posh people, their thoughts and the way they use language to signal their class.

“Ouça, deu férias de Natal à criada?”

Translates to “Listen, did you give Christmas Holiday to the servant?” The words “Ouça” (Listen) and “Deu” (Gave) are in the third person once again, the locutor has also omited any choice of pronouns.

“Se não tem casa na Comporta nem se dirija a mim!”

‘If (you) don’t own a house in Comporta don’t even speak to me!’ is the translation for another tweet by this account. Once again.

Athough social class is often associated with how much money someone has (Mooney & Evans, 2015), social class is constituted by other factors such as education, location and language. We can then say that the writer of these tweets uses language to communicate their class by not only the topics of their phrases but also by linguistic cues such as the use of third person and pronoun obmission.

The fact that the humour of this account cannot be translated is interesting from a sociolinguistic view. No one would find “Listen, did you give Christmas Holiday to the servant?” funny, for example, in any other langugage. It is purely for the social cues behind it that a Portuguese person would laugh at this comment.

Conclusion

In European Portuguese, we can, then, agree with Guilhermo and Bermejo (2015) when stating that the use of “você” in European Portuguese is marked by neutrality in its multiple contexts of use like assimetrical power relationships and intimicy in higher classes.

In conclusion, we can state that people use language to construct their identities and their relationship to others. Humans are influenced by the world around them and language is the best example of this. Most of the time, the process of language goes behond words. The process of identity and its construction through language, although uncousciously by the speaker, is of extreme importance. Therefore, teaching Portuguese to an English speaker might be tricky without the explanation of sociolinguistics and the concepts of politeness, intimicy and power relations.

Bibliography

Brown, R. and Gilman, A. (1968). Readings in the Sociology of Language. DeGruyter Mouton, pp.252-281.

Erro Crasso. (2017). Erro Crasso T1 Ep3 - LILI CANEÇAS explica o seu instagram, conta que tem um stalker e é seduzida. [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ag96DZvQw

Llamas, C. (2008). The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge.

Lopes, C., & Mota, M. (2019). A percepção e a aceitabilidade de formas de tratamento no português europeu (PE): uma abordagem experimental. Working Papers Em Linguística, 20(2), 135-174. doi: 10.5007/1984-8420.2019v20n2p135

Mooney, A., & Evans, B. (2015). Language, society and power (4th ed.). Routledge.

Pei, J., & Jurgens, D. (2020). Quantifying Intimacy in Language. 2020 Conference On Empirical Methods In Natural Language Processing, 5307-5326.

Porto University. (2008). O fascínio da linguagem : actas do Colóquio de homenagem a Fernanda Irene Fonseca (pp. 91-99). Porto.

This essay was submitted on April 5th 2022 by Lara Soares for the module 'Language and Society' as part of my degree English and Creative Writing BA.