As palavras e a enunciação: a china, a machorra e a morocha no dicionário de regionalismos do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

This thesis has as its research object the Dicionário de regionalismos do Rio Grande do Sul (1984) organized by the brothers Zeno Cardoso Nunes and Rui Cardoso Nunes. Theoretically supported by the History of Linguistic Ideas (HLI), we consider this dictionary as a linguistic instrument with a regionalist nature where it is possible to observe socio-cultural practices of gaucho society. HLI, as a field of study, gives us the theoretical presuppositions through which we analyze the way how the Dicionário de regionalismos do Rio Grande do Sul and the terms registered in this dictionary relate to History, that is, how language gives meaning to History. We also rely on the Benvenistian perspective (BENVENISTE, [1966] 2005, [1966] 2006) and on Guimarães (2005, 2018) to analyze the position of enunciating subjects made by the Nunes brothers who, when organizing the Dicionário de regionalismos do Rio Grande do Sul, enunciate and define female subjects. From the Dicionário de regionalismos do Rio Grande do Sul, we selected the terms china, machorra and morocha to analyze the way their definitions are crossed by social, historical, cultural, ideological and political aspects. Subsequently, we compared the definitions of china, machorra and morocha with the definitions of these same words extracted from dictionaries organized before our object of study. We analyzed the updating or non-updating of the selected words’ definitions. We found that Zeno Cardoso Nunes and Rui Cardoso Nunes used these dictionaries as a source and did not update much the definitions of china, machorra and morocha as they rewrite what was already registered through the rewriting process proposed by Guimarães (2005, 2018). Rewriting, as an analytical category, allows us to analyze how the selected words and their definitions establish semantic relations with other words and/or expressions often repeating the derogatory character registered in their definitions, happening in the same way as it happens with subjects named china, machorra and morocha. Our thesis aims to establish a dialogue among HLI, History and studies of gender and race, in an interpretation that questions how language means the socio-historical conditions regarding the social constructions of the feminine gender constituting the meanings of china, machorra and morocha. In this way, the Dicionário de regionalismos do Rio Grande do Sul constitutes a linguistic materiality where it can be investigated how language is affected by History and society, giving meaning to the relations among language, subject and History found in the words selected for this research.