O processo de subordinação linguística e de subordinação social da etnia negra no século XIX

Abstract

This thesis is included in the area of the Linguistic Historiography. It aims to analyze, by means of the Portuguese language used in Brazil in the nineteenth century, the process of grammaticalization of the linguistic subordination and the social subordination of the black ethnic in the nineteenth century. We have postulated that this linguistic subordination reveals the social subordination of black people, allowing the construction of a social memory, which was then assumed by the dominant class and is present in the statements of the Brazilian Law 2040 sanctioned in September 28th, 1871, also known as Law of the Free Womb. The close proximity among Language, History and social reality, with the intention to verify the process constitution of social subordination, which was present in that legal statute, has resulted in a submitting effect of the so-called freeborn, then submitted to either governmental or social dominant class. The examination of the constitutive statements of the internal functioning of the Law of the Free Womb has revealed their contradictions, since the linguistic marks and the institutional mechanisms, which are represented by the Brazilian Parliament, have not effectively manifested the intended freedom to black slaves. On the contrary, in the context of that reality, we infer that freedom for black people was visualized in a secondary form. By means of this work we can conclude that the linguistic transformations and the forces of the social movement acting at that historical moment have determined the black slaves should occupy a supporting position in the Brazilian society. The reason for this situation is authoritarian arguments, which are implicitly or explicitly expressed in the legal text. Therefore, only a marginal social space remains to black people