Tabus linguísticos e o surgimento de eufemismos na fala-em-interação em língua portuguesa como L1 E L2

Abstract

The use of figures of speech, specifically euphemisms, reveals how the participants in an interaction construct their utterances when dealing with a topic, expression or word that they think needs to be eased. In this research, we aim to examine when this choice is made by Portuguese speakers both as a mother tongue (hereinafter L1) and as a foreign language (hereinafter L2) and how the construction of euphemisms occurs. We have as theoretical framework approaches that start from a cognitive-interactional perspective, treating euphemisms as traits present in both intra and intercultural communication. In order to investigate the cultural conceptualizations that emerge in talk-in-interaction, we resort to works about Cultural Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and also some pragmatic approaches, such as Correia (1927), Kröll (1984) and Guérios (1979), which start from the assumption that linguistic taboos are part of the cultural framework of certain speech communities. Regarding the methodology, two video recordings were made: one with a group of Brazilians, whose L1 is Portuguese, and another one with foreigners, that were living in Brazil at the time, and whose L1 were French or German. Both groups talked in Portuguese for the purpose of this research. After the data were collected, we used the software EXMARaLDA (SCHMIDT; WÖRMER, 2009) to transcribe and the GAT 2 conventions (Selting et al., 2016) to facilitate the transcription of both visual and verbal aspects of what was on tape. This research showed that, in both recordings, gestures, prosody and facial gestures were found as euphemisms occurrences, as well as semantic substitutions; the latter, commonly seen in grammars and textbooks, was found exclusively in the interaction between Brazilians. We identified also other phenomena that could function as euphemisms within the interactions, such as the use of humor as a coping mechanism, as well as the occurrences of self-repair in their speeches.