RESPECT MY SPEECH AS I CONSIDER YOUR WRITING:

THE MYTHOLOGY OF LINGUISTIC PREJUDICE AS A PROPAGATOR OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STIGMA

Abstract

 Language has the potential to be a living instrument, susceptible to flexibility and renewal, together with its users, in a linguistic community and in a given communicative situation. Categorically, the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil is formed from a substratum of languages of indigenous origin that was absorbed by the language of the colonizer and the enslaved, as well as influences from other peoples (Galindo, 2022). With this historical context in mind, this work aims to verify the linguistic myth “It's right to speak like this because it's written like this” and analyze the consequences of this belief. To do this, we drew on Bagno's (2015) theory on the mythology of linguistic prejudice and on Patriota (2006) and Coelho (2010) regarding the study of sociolinguistics, which has speech, in its actual use, as its object of study. Methodologically, Gil (2002) and Mascarenhas (2014) characterize this research as descriptive, qualitative and interpretative. Considering our results, we found that there is no supremacy of writing over speaking; both are interactive and complementary practices (Marcuschi, 2010). Therefore, the dissemination of the standard conception of language based on socio-political criteria transforms this language into an instrument of power held by literate individuals who stigmatize speakers of a living and real language.