FORMAS DE TRATAMENTO UTILIZADAS EM FALAS DE PERSONAGENS DA TELENOVELA PANTANAL, DE BENEDITO RUY BARBOSA

Abstract

This master’s thesis reports research aiming at describing, through the tagging methodology (Frías Conde, 2018; 2023), the forms of address used in the speeches of the characters in the telenovela (kind of soap opera) Pantanal (2022), by Benedito Ruy Barbosa. The relevance of this study lies in the fact that the forms of address reflect relationships linked to social structures in each sociocultural context (Biderman, 1972; Frías Conde, 2018, 2023), and understanding how these elements function helps to reveal the power relations that are established in a given social group and how they change over time. We establish the hypothesis that the genre telenovela presupposes the evolution of the characters, especially the protagonists, throughout the plot, in accordance with the change in the social roles they play, and this is manifested through language, especially through forms of address. The theoretical discussion is mainly based on the contributions of Brown and Gilman (1960), regarding the notions of power semantic and solidarity semantic; Goffman (1970), on the theory of courtesy and the notion of face-saving; Biderman (1972), on the relationship between Brazilian Portuguese forms of treatment and social structures; and Frías Conde (2018, 2023), with the tagging system of forms of address in Ibero-Romance languages, among other authors. Using the labeling methodology, we analyze excerpts from scenes from the telenovela Pantanal involving characters that belong to different social strata in the geographic and cultural context of the Pantanal in Mato Grosso. The forms of address are labeled according to linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic categories. The analyses carried out show that the forms of address vary according to the interactants’ level of intimacy and the hierarchical relationships established between them, aspects that undergo changes over time, as the social roles played by the characters change.