DE POLACOS A POLONESES, DE PROBLEMA A ORGULHO: TRAJETÓRIA DAS ATITUDES E CRENÇAS LINGUÍSTICAS EM VIRMOND/PR

Abstract

The theme of this thesis is the linguistic beliefs and attitudes of the descendants of Poles who live in Virmond/PR, a municipality located approximately 340 kilometers from Curitiba, capital of Paraná. We believe that factors external to the language have been influencing the feelings of this ethnic group in relation to their own variety, also interfering with the linguistic beliefs and attitudes not only of residents of Polish origin, but also of neighboring cities. The main objective is to identify the linguistic beliefs and attitudes established from the contact between Polish and Portuguese in the locality, whose population is essentially formed by descendants of Poles and, from there, relate the process of valuing or stigmatizing the language to the change of role and linguistic status in Virmond society, which can be noticed through political practices. This research is justified considering the history and changes that took place in an immigration location that transits between the "pride" of speaking the language of the ancestors, the "prohibition", "the problems of communication and acceptance" and the return of " pride". In order to answer such questions and prove or refute our hypotheses, we base ourselves on the concepts of Sociolinguistics from authors such as Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968/1972), Fishman (1995), Gomez Molina (1996), Moreno Fernandez (1998) focusing on languages in contact based on authors such as Weinreich (1953), Appel and Muysken (1996), Thun (2005), Calvet (2008), Raso, Mello and Altenhofen (2011) linguistic attitudes and beliefs supporting in authors such as Gomez Molina (1996), Bisinoto (2007), Aguilera (2008), Busse and Sella (2012), Corbari (2013), Botassini (2015). The research was developed through a research instrument, a metalinguistic questionnaire, formed by a set of questions related to the historical linguistic formation of the Virmond/PR community and the degree of linguistic awareness of the informants; the main situations of use of the Polish language, according to the informants; the conservation or abandonment of Polish arising from the linguistic beliefs and attitudes of the residents of Virmond/PR about the Polish language and culture; the formation of the linguistic identity(ies) of the community and the notions of prestige and stigma about the Polish language and culture. In order to achieve the objectives we set ourselves, a socio-historical survey of the community was carried out, analyzing how social and historical factors can act on the linguistic beliefs of its speakers and how they can and on the different stages of use, undergoing significant transformations, from the arrival of the first descendants of Polish immigrants to the present day. The study is qualitative and uses a field study methodology based on authors such as Labov (1972), Chambers and Trudgil (1994), Liebscher (1998), Tarallo (2003). The choice of informants was made based on the cross model developed by Thun (1996) which considers, for its research, sociocultural or educational criteria (diastratic), geographic location (diatopic), age group (diagenerational) and gender (generational). The data pointed to the knowledge of Virmond's Polish descendants about the historical and linguistic formation of the community that is focused not only on the language but, mainly, on the Polish culture. We also identified that there is still a strong presence of the immigration language in the daily lives of the descendants and, despite the hypothesis that Polish would be used only in the religious and family context, there are still situations of use in public places such as commerce, for example