The Other’s Speech: Representation and Stereotype in Contemporary Lusophone Literature

Abstract

At a time when linguistic studies sharpen the awareness of the diversity between national varieties of the Portuguese language – especially between EP (European Portuguese) and BP (Brazilian Portuguese in the literature produced in both Portugal and Brazil there are several attempts of linguistic representation of the other in dialogues between Portuguese and Brazilian characters. If, on the one hand, this type of occurrence reveals an interest in diversity and the awareness that this diversity exists, on the other hand, at least part of these narratives, when presenting the dialogue in diversity, ends up stereotyping the reciprocal identities. From this perspective, the proposed analysis crosses the domain of sociolinguistics and that of literary criticism, in order to analyze the representation of contact between EP and BP in works of contemporary Lusophone literature, patenting processes of recurrent normalization and stereotyping.