A imigração recente de venezuelanos e haitianos em Chapecó: suas crenças e atitudes linguísticas

Abstract

The present paper proposes to investigate the linguistic beliefs and attitudes based on data collected with Haitian and Venezuelan informants. Thus, our main goal is to describe the beliefs and linguistic attitudes present among Haitian immigrants and Venezuelan immigrants, both from recent immigration in the city of Chapecó, Santa Catarina. For this, we selected 8 informants from each ethnic group, that is, four Haitian women and four Haitian men and the same amount of Venezuelan origin, totaling 16 interviewed immigrants. Besides these informants, two Brazilian couples, composed of one man and one woman each (totaling 4 informants in this category). They constitute the control group, with which we described their perceptions about the beliefs and attitudes towards immigrants, specifically to know the other look, that is, their perception about the new recent immigration in the city of Chapecó. The selection of the informants and the methodology applied, followed the criteria established by the Pluridimensional and Relational Dialectology of Harald Thun (1996, 1998, 2005, 2010). The selection of informants for the immigrant group was only Haitians and Venezuelans according to age groups, the youngest with 18 to 36 years old (considered as GI) and the oldest, above 36 years old (considered as GII). On the other hand, the selection for the control group was an older couple, both retired and with little movement in the space (being the GII) and a younger couple of workers and with much movement in the space (being the GI). Besides these criteria, the informants are also classified as upper class - Ca (people with more studies) and lower class - Cb (people with less studies). To collect and obtain the sample, we conducted interviews with the informants by means of a semi-directed conversation and a question/answer style metalinguistic questionnaire, both of which address the central themes of the research, mainly language-related issues. The questionnaire used is linked to the Atlas of Languages in Contact on the Border, but there were some specific adaptations for this work. In this sense, we will focus on the study of language beliefs and attitudes from our sample to analyze the language behaviors in a positive or negative way of the informants living in this locality. The results pointed out that immigrants have positive attitudes about their linguistic variety.