O sertão por escrito no Livro de Razão: um microcosmo sócio-histórico e linguístico da Bahia rural oitocentista.

Abstract

This thesis, which is part of the Historical Linguistics branch of the Post-Graduate Program in Language and Culture, aims to (i) carry out the semi-diplomatic edition of the Livro da Razão, a private manuscript, which belonged to the Pinheiro/Canguçu family, in the 19th-century-rural Bahia, based on facsimile edition - photographic reproduction made by Jorge Viana Santos, for UEFS's project Electronic Corpus of Historical Documents of Sertão - and (ii) to analyze the writing practices carried out in the rural environment of the Fazenda do Campo Seco, in Bom Jesus dos Meiras, currently the city of Brumado. The study undertaken focused on the socio-historical analysis of the context of writing production in this environment, on the conception of the social profile of scriptors and on the descriptive study of the graphemic-phonetic indices identified in the writing of these scriptors, aiming to contribute to the linguistic social history of Brazil. Considering that “Every language is made up of different layers [...]. To explain a language is, at least in part, to understand its history.” (MARTIN, 2003, p.141), the thesis presents an interdisciplinary approach, using the theoretical-methodological apparatus of Historical Linguistics (MARTIN, 2003; FARACO, 2005; MATTOS E SILVA, 2008), of Philology (SPINA. 1977). ; CAMBRAIA, 2012; PAIXÃO DE SOUZA, 2013; TELLES, 2016; LOSE, 2017) and the strands arising from the rupture of the traditional historiographical paradigm, namely: the Social History of Written Culture (PETRUCCI, 1993, 1999, 2003; CASTILLO GÓMES , 2003) and Micro-History (GINZBURG, 1987; BURKE, 1992, VAINFAS, 2002; MATTOS E SILVA, 2004; BARROS, 2005) to unveil the backlands of Bahia in the 1800s. Historical Linguistics has the primary function of seeking explanations, in the past, for linguistic facts of the present, through the remaining documents, which record language data. It is in this context that the philological work comes into play, since even "written documents that seem to us, so often transparent and easy to understand, threaten us with various traps embedded in each word." (LOPES et al 2017, p. 96). Thus, Philology reveals itself as a very important instrument for linguistic studies, as it is responsible for establishing the text, which leads us to language data (TELLES, 2016, p. 195). In turn, the Social History of Written Culture and Micro-History are mechanisms capable of guaranteeing the reconstitution of reading and writing practices in official and unofficial spaces, with an emphasis on the materiality of writing and the reconstitution of narrated partial histories by manuscripts from the past, in the specific case – O Livro de Razão – object of study. The results found revealed, in the linguistic field, the graphophonetic variation in the nineteenth-century Sertão, evidenced uses of Brazilian Portuguese spoken by different social classes, in the current synchrony, in different regions of Brazil, regardless of the level of education. Regarding the socio-historical background, the instrumentalization of editing, backed by a fruitful dialogue between the Social History of Written Culture and Micro-History, made it possible to bring the “magnifying glass” closer to individual and tracked experiences, such as the case of the gentlemen from Campo Seco, and they offered us a socio-historical and linguistic microcosm of the nineteenth-century in Sertão.