Possessive pronouns for the addressee in protestants’ personal letters from the 20th century

• Main Author: Francisco Jardes Nobre de Araújo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-graduação em Linguística 2018-12-01
• Series: Fórum Linguístico
• Subjects: Pronomes possessivos; Cartas pessoais; Comunidade de prática; Poder e solidariedade; Sociolinguística
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/57755

This paper describes and analyzes the use of the possessive pronouns ‘teu’, ‘seu’, and ‘vosso’ in Brazilian Portuguese from sample of written material formed by 44 letters addressed to an evangelical pastor, one of the pioneers in the diffusion of the Assembly of God in the North and Northeast Brazilian regions in the 20th century. Taking as the constituents of a community of practice the senders of such letters, the use of possessives is analyzed in the light of the Theory of Power and Solidarity (BROWN; GILMAN, 1960), considering that the pronominal system is in variation (WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 1968), and applying the methodology of Historical Sociolinguistics (CONDE SILVESTRE, 2007). The results point out to a relatively conflictuous system in which the uses of pronouns are not categorically based on sender-addressee relations, but rather the forms ‘teu’, ‘seu’, and ‘vosso’ are used, to a considerable extent, according to the semantic of power and solidarity described by Brown and Gilman (1960).