O léxico de remanescentes de comunidades garimpeiras do Alto Jequitinhonha - MG

Abstract

Brazil has regions with different striking features. At the linguistic level, some unique features are identified in several places, especially in the lexical scope, as recorded by Amaral (1920) and by several recent researchers, namely: Isquerdo (1998), Souza (2008), and Ribeiro (2010) which shows that the striking characteristics of the environment clearly reflect the interplay between language, culture and society. According to Santos (1976), the State of Minas Gerais has been politically, socially and economically affected, since the 17th century, by the mining activity. However, due to environmental factors, this situation has been changing, and there are only a few remaining groups of mining communities (whose activity ended at least twenty years ago), who have changed their habits. One of such groups is part of the population of Datas, located in the Upper Jequitinhonha - MG. Understanding that the lexicon reveals socio-historical and cultural aspects of the reality of a group and taking into account the aforementioned studies, we sought to study the lexicon of this remaining group in light of the following hypothesis: in this region, there is a very peculiar lexicon and the language of these remnants of mining communities (lexical items that are part of the natural universe of mining or relating to their practitioners cultural, economic and social development) justifies this peculiarity. This study therefore describes, analyzes and reports the lexicon of the speech of the inhabitants of this region, based on assumptions provided by the Lexicological Theory (MATORÉ, 1953; BALDINGER, 1970); Lexicographical Theory (BARBOSA, 1995; BIDERMAN, 1998, 1999, 2001; HAENSCH, 1982) and Theory of Language Variation (LABOV, 1972). With these assumptions in mind, we carried out a qualitative analysis of 629 lexias collected in verbal interactional sessions. From this analysis, which allowed us to confirm our initial hypothesis, we prepared two glossaries of lexias extracted from the speech of the remaining members of mining communities that constitute peculiarities of the speech of the studied region.