Ideologies underlying English loanwords in Brazil and sociolinguistic awareness

Abstract

Aiming to analyze the relationship that speakers have with loanwords, this study presents an investigation of the linguistic ideologies underlying foreign words in Brazil through a study of societal treatment having as corpus multimodal productions (memes, cartoons and comic strips) collected in blogs, websites and social networks. Data collection was done through internet searches using the keyword estrangeirismos. The 40 findings were grouped as a result of the discursive similarity and classified according to the position they expressed in relation to foreign words, of which only a few were chosen to compose the present work. After a comparison with the metalanguage used by authors such as Faraco (2001; 2004); Garcez; Zilles (2004); Schmitz (2004); Possenti, (2004); Fiorin (2004); Assis (2007); Soares (2019) and others, six linguistic ideologies underlying English foreignisms were identified: excess loanwords; loanwords as a language vice; loanwords seen as colonization or ideological domination; loanwords as an impairment to understanding; loanwords as a stylistic choice and, finally, loanwords through the naturalization bias. The analysis of the discourse present in the materials allows us to conclude that the speakers have varied opinions in relation to foreign words and these opinions occur in the form of specific discourses. Speakers also have different degrees of linguistic and sociolinguistic awareness of foreign words, and they are able to demonstrate this in their use of language.