The Urbanization of Rural Dialect Speakers
A Sociolinguistic Study in Brazil

This book investigates, from a linguistic point of view, how rural migrants adjust to an urban environment.

Stella Maris Bortoni-Ricardo (Author)

9780521103855, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 December 2008

276 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

This book investigates, from a linguistic point of view, how rural migrants adjust to an urban environment. The focus of Dr Bortoni-Ricardo's study is speakers of Caipira, a dialect of Brazilian Portuguese, who moved into a satellite city of Brasilia. The volume examines in careful detail the historical and synchronic sociolinguistic background of the migrants and the changes that have taken place in their linguistic repertoire, with particular emphasis on phonological variables. Both the theoretical framework and novel methodology employed here derive from the assumption that there are statistically measurable relations between the characteristics of a person's social network and his/her linguistic behaviour. The volume will thus be of interest to all readers, whether linguists, psychologists or anthropologists, interested in language accommodation. As an empirical study of cross-cultural communication problems, it will also be of value to social scientists concerned with the process of rural-urban migration.

1. Introduction
2. The sociolinguistic situation in Brazil
3. The Caipira dialect
4. Network analysis: a dynamic model to approach language change
5. Network patterns and dialect diffuseness
6. Collecting data in Brazlandia
7. The models and methods
8. The quantitative analysis of the linguistic data
9. Cross-cultural communication problems
10. Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Sociolinguistics [CFB]