THE IDENTITY OF HINTERLAND MIGRANTS OF THE STATE OF AMAZONAS (BRAZIL) FROM THE LEXICON PERSPECTIVE

THE IDENTITY OF HINTERLAND MIGRANTS OF THE STATE OFAMAZONAS (BRAZIL) FROM THE LEXICON PERSPECTIVE: a socio-

geolinguistic study

Sandra Maria Godinho Gonçalves1

ABSTRACT:The contact between peoples and languages is currently favoredby globalization. This discussion encourages the study ofresearch on intercultural encounters and its influence on theconstruction of linguistic and social identity of theindividual. The relationship between language and theconstruction of social and linguistic identity of the subjectsuffers an intensification in multicultural contexts in whichvarious social, cultural and linguistic groups interact sociallyin the same geographical space. In Amazonas, the Caboclo2 hasseen his original identity change and has also seen his lifereference be lost through the continuous cultural shocks thatforce him to leave the interior of the state of Amazonas insearch of work and better living conditions, such as healthservices and access to education, in the capital, Manaus. Thisquantitative research study seeks to register the lexicon usedby migrants from the interior of Amazonas state, more precisely,from Tefé, Manacapuru and Itacoatiara, living in Manaus for atleast five years; to compare the semantic-lexical fields of therecords obtained from the Linguistic Atlas of the Amazon, ALAM,Cruz (2004); to identify whether there was a change of thelinguistic identity of hinterland migrants of the state ofAmazonas or not; to identify, in case of a change, whether thiswould be in line with the desire of migrants for upward socialmobility, which influences his identity, according to Castells(1996); and, finally, to analyze whether a homogenization of thecaboclo culture is underway or not. This research is based onthe Sociolinguistics Variation, the principles of Dialectology,and contains some considerations regarding the collectedlexicon, according to Pottier (1978) as well as someconsiderations on the ideological aspect of the lexicon,according to Santos and Cristianini (2012).

1 Master's Graduate Program in Letters and Arts from the FederalUniversity of Amazonas (UFAM), email: [email protected] A cultural individual that lives in the forest near the rivers andhas strong beliefs about mythical creatures and nature.

KEYWORDS: Identity; Dialectology; Socio-geolinguistics; Lexicon;Brazilian Portuguese.

1. INTRODUCTION

Much is currently said about the contact betweenpeoples and languages, especially that it is currentlyfavored by globalization. This discussion fosters the studyof research on intercultural encounters and its influenceon the construction of linguistic and social identity ofthe individual. The relationship between language and theconstruction of social and linguistic identity of thesubject undergoes an intensification in multiculturalcontexts in which various social, cultural and linguisticgroups interact socially in the same geographical space.However, the meeting of peoples and languages has alwaysexisted throughout the history of civilization around theworld.

The state of Amazonas in the sixteenth centuryconsisted (and still does) of a multi-ethnic and linguisticenvironment, belonging to different linguistic trunks(FREIRE, 2004). Amazonas was invaded by Europeans and wasreorganized politically and linguistically in an attempt tointegrate indigenous societies into the market economy.When a political unit was created in the region, the Stateand the Church intervened with proposals to achieve alinguistic unity based on colonial interests, which led tothe disappearance and extinction of several languages andchanged the linguistic and ethnic identity of the Indians,at first called savages in their native villages where theyonly spoke their native tongue (vernacular); after this,they were called tame Indians, living in villages of‘repartição’3 because they practiced bilingualism, speaking

3 In these villages, they were imprisoned with Indians from otherstribes, who spoke other languages, and they had to wait to work asslaves in the big city. The only way to communicate among themselveswas to learn to speak LGA, a language taught to Indians bymissionaries based on the tupinambá language..

the vernacular language and the Amazonian General Language(LGA); after that, they were called Tapuio Indians, livingin towns and villages, where they practiced monolingualism,speaking only the LGA; next, they were called civilizedIndians, because they practiced bilingualism, speaking LGAand the Portuguese Language (LP) in the cities; finally,they were called caboclo, monolingual in LP (FREIRE, 2004),"a cultural type that emerged as a result of ‘tupinization’of non-Tupi Iberian cultures" (Moran, 1974 apud ADAMS;MURRIETA; NEVES, 2006, p.19).

This mixing of cultures caused the languages toevolve, both the LGA and the LP. These languages havesuffered diachronic changes, such as the Portugueselanguage, transplanted to Brazil from Portugal, whichbecame smoother, richer and more eclectic with theinfluences from Tupi, and the influences from Africandescendants, such as intonation, voice modulation,sweetness in the pronunciation, modification of theoriginal strong guttural sounds and their musicality(BENCHIMOL, 2009). The languages also suffered synchronicchanges, as could be seen in the coexistence of differentlinguistic forms for the same meaning with the same truthvalue at a given time. It is the language variation processposited by the sociolinguistic Labov. These changes werefelt in a more troubled way in the early days of the Amazoncolonization, with the emergence of the caboclo culture.

The mestizos (caboclos), along with the Indians,Portuguese and Cearenses (people from Ceará State), formedthe social foundation of the Amazonian population and weremoved several times from their original sites to populatethe Amazon since the ‘pombalinian4’ times, transported tofulfil the urban projects of strategic importance to thegeopolitics of the region (GUZMAN, 2006, p. 70).

Since his appearance, the Amazonian man has seen hisoriginal identity change and has also seen his life

4 When people of Brazil was ruled by Marquês de Pombal who conceived a Law that imposed that LP woul be the only one spoken in the country.

reference be lost at the continuous cultural shocks thatforce them out of the state "in search for work and betterliving conditions such as health care and access toeducation "(OLIVEIRA, M., 2010, p.113).

However, the identity of the Amazonian Caboclo is notlinked only to the historical, political and geo-economiccontext. His identity is also linked to the act of speech."When speaking, an individual conveys, in addition to themessage contained in his speech, a series of data thatallows a interlocutor to not only infer his personal style- his idiolect - but also associate him with a particulargroup" (BRANDÃO, 1991, p. 6). The intonation, thepronunciation, the choice of vocabulary, and the preferencefor certain phrasal constructions indicate the region towhich the individual belongs, the social group to which hebelongs and the situation (formal or informal) in which heis. So there is an identification process regarding thespeech community or social network to which the individualbelongs (Wardhaugh, 2010, p.119).

Cruz (2004), who developed the Linguistic Atlas ofAmazonas - ALAM, investigated the speech of the AmazonianCaboclo, covering nine cities representative of the ninemicro-regions of the state of Amazonas (Barcelos, Tefé,Lábrea, Humaita, Itacoatiara, Parintins, Benjamin Constant,Eirunepé and Manacapuru). On the other hand, Costa (2010)pointed out that the main origin cities of migrants who nowlive in the city of Manaus are: São Gabriel da Cachoeira,Tefé, Coari, Manacapuru, Iranduba, Itacoatiara, Maués andParintins. So this work, in order to make the comparison ofcaboclo vernaculars (already investigated by ALAM) moreconsistent, worked only with migrants from the cities ofTefé, Itacoatiara and Manacapuru in which the locations arecoincident (Parintins was left out because the researchercould not find a sufficient number of ideal informants).

This article, which is the product of my masters’research, aims to study the lexicon of these Amazonas statehinterland migrants residing in the city of Manaus, which

currently is undergoing rapid urbanization due toglobalization. The hypothesis that arises is that there isa change in the linguistic identity of these hinterlandmigrants when they come to live in the city. As speakers ofriverine vernacular come into contact with the oral urbanstandard language, it is believed that the occurrence oftypical caboclo lexical items tends to decrease, causing agap of these stigmatized dialects as some lexicons of urbanvariety is assumed to the detriment of their customaryregional dialect.

The first part of this article deals with thetheoretical foundation that supports the empirical researchand discusses the concepts of identity, linguisticidentity, lexicon, Sociolinguistics and Dialectology. Thesecond part deals with the methodology adopted in thesurvey, the selection of informants, gathering andanalyzing data. The last part presents conclusions.

2 Identity

Identity is a complex and interdisciplinary subject.Complex because it was never a unanimous concept amongacademics from various areas and interdisciplinary becausethis concept is shared by the fields of Sociology,Psychoanalysis, Psychology and Philosophy. Therefore, itsdefinition varies among different fields and differentauthors. In this paper, we discuss the concept of identityin the field of Sociology and Psychology.

In the context of Sociology, for example, the conceptof identity is fluid and fragmented (MENDES, Ichikawa,2010, p.170) compared to the psychological andphilosophical perspectives. In Sociology, the reflection onthe concept of identity involves positioning the individualin the historical and social context in which he/she livesand recognizes that the social groups with which heidentifies may be contradictory. It also implies thediscrimination of the individual (or a group ofindividuals) from another because he/she is individualizedthanks to the sum of his/her particular life experiences

and world knowledge that he/she accumulated during his/herexistence. The subject then begins to self-recognize andalso recognize the Other in all its otherness.

This identity construction process is complex. First,it is symbolic, since the individual uses symbols(language) to create meanings; second, this process issocial, because it occurs within a community or within agroup of people, and, finally it is psychic, because it isa mental construct. Thus, it is necessary to emphasize theimportance of the role that language has in theconstruction of identity and its influence in the socialculture of the individual, permeating the whole process ofsocial identification. Rajagopalan (1998) points out thatthe identity of an individual is built within the languageand through it, and there is no fixed identity outsidelanguage. We also cannot think of identity without takinginto account the idea of representation.

The representation of oneself in today's world, inwhich the phenomenon of globalization is widespread in theeconomic, administrative and political fields, is no easytask. In this historical period, in which we find theexacerbation of individualism, consumerism, hedonisticethics and fragmentation of time and space "marked by thedevelopment of technological life forms that provide, amongother things, a huge flow of information and products,resulting in a permanent disposal of classifications andformulas" (Marinho, 2009, p.82), the concept of identityhas been questioned, deconstructing the idea of a single,full identity and criticizing essentialist models.

Currently, identity is seen as an attribute, aconstruct that is not innate to the individual, but thatwill be built through social practices. Identity isinternalized through a particular individualization processthat varies from individual to individual, and which isconstructed through social practice within a community; sothe concept of identity is no longer purely individual and

gains a social perspective, that is, the subject is nowobserved by the Other through his/her social relationships.

For this reason, the concept of identity links theindividual process (who I am) with the social process (howI am defined by others). In this process, the definition ofoneself is linked to the categories used to identify anindividual in a given social space, so that the identityarises not so much of identity fullness, which is alreadywithin us as individuals, "but from a lack of wholenessthat is filled from our exterior, the ways in which wesuppose we are seen by others" (Hall, 2006, p.39). It isthe outside/exterior making up the interior of the subject.

The construction of identities uses the worldknowledge that an individual accumulates over a lifetime,given the range of raw materials provided by "history,geography, biology, productive and reproductiveinstitutions, the collective memory for personal fantasies,by apparatuses of power and revelations of a religiousnature" (Castells, 1996, p.23). This material is processedby the individual, organized and reorganized within thesocial structure to which the subject belongs and theidentification procedures to which the individual issubject. Currently, the idea that identity encompasses manydifferent identities or identifications (which becomelarger, as the differences of social practices are moreobvious) is more accepted among scholars of social sciencesand psychoanalysis.

You may feel that you are the same person in allyour social interactions, but you position yourselfdifferently in various cultural systems in which youcirculate. You change at different times, in differentplaces and according to the different social roles(WOODWARD, 2008, p.30) that you are exercising, perhapscausing multiple identities to be in conflict orcontradiction. The identity concept today is seen andanalyzed as fragmented. Castells proposes three forms ofidentity construction:

• Legitimizing Identity: exercised by the dominantinstitutions in the rush to expand their domination, expandand rationalize the dominion they have over individuals.For example, the Church in the Middle Ages, the school andthe media in Totalitarian States, and the masscommunication media in contemporary Western societies, sothat the values propagated by these institutions aresimilar to the values propagated by the State.

• Resistance Identity: created by individuals who arein devalued or stigmatized positions, opposing thelegitimizing identities, seeking to ensure their survivalwith different principles and values from existing socialinstitutions. These resistance identities give rise tocommunities that represent an opposition to situations ofoppression and struggling against the sense of exclusionand alienation, following a possible social injustice;

• Project Identity: when subjects build a newidentity, capable of redefining their position in society,aiming at the transformation of the whole social structure.In this situation, there is a redefinition of the subject,and the creation of a new paradigm of existence that canaffect society in social interaction. An example of thiswas women's liberation that affected the entire Westernsociety;

The identity of migrants entails a culturalresistance, an attempt to keep their identity of origin,but unable to remain impervious to the cultural influenceof the society that surrounds them.

3 Linguistic Identity

Language, society and culture are intertwined. Takefor example a subject that says "se abanquem, tchê!5". Weimmediately identify this speaker and as a native ofsouthern Brazil, because pronunciation, vocabulary choice,the preference for certain phrasal constructions, idiomsand expressions are indexes that identify the region or

5 A regional idiom that means: make yourself at home!

country that the speaker originates from and the socialgroup to which he belongs (Brandão, 1991, p. 6). Anotherexample is the study of Labov, 1963, about a blackcommunity on Martha's Vineyard Island, State ofMassachusetts, in the United States. The study was on alocal variant, non-standard and conservative about thediphthongs / au / as in house and / ay / and in right. Thecurrent use is of local variants, stigmatized, [Əu]; [Əy],rather than the standard variant brought by vacationersinvading the island. The local population was resentful ofthis invasion and chose a linguistic attitude to mark theirterritory, their community profile and their culturalidentity (as well as their linguistic identity), so theyexaggerate the pronunciation of the stigmatized form(Tarallo, 2007, p.14); this linguistic and culturaltouchstone reflects their own way of talking, being andacting and is intrinsically linked to their linguisticidentity. In this sociolinguistic approach, language is aproduct of the culture of this community and brings,underlying it, its customs, the history of its people andmakes the speaker's (or group of speakers) connection tothe real world. In the real world, the speaker tends toapproach members of the group with which he wishes toidentify. "We create our linguistic rules at the time ofthe utterance of each speech act" (LE PAGE 1980 citedBACELAR, 2009, p.9), mainly because we circulate in societyin different social groups. We can even say that every actof speech is seen as an act of identity (be it personal,social, cultural or linguistic).

4 Lexicon

By making use of language, identifying similaritiesor discerning the distinctive features (that individualizethe individual in different entities), Man names. Thisnomination process generated the lexicon of naturallanguages. But what is the lexicon?

There are different names for the lexicon: lexicalunit, linguistic sign, lexeme, lexia, lexical item and

vocabulary, to name a few. The notion of linguistic signwas created by Saussure, "the father of structuralistlinguistics". For him, the sign refers to the relationbetween the 'name given to existing things' and 'the thingitself'’ and consists of two parts: signifier andsignified. The signifier is the acoustic impression and thesignified corresponds to the object, that is, the thingitself. Also according to Saussure, the linguistic signbelongs to a structure formed by two axles, paradigmaticand syntagmatic, implying that every lexical unit has asemantic and a syntactic correspondent. On the other hand,according to Dubois (2006, p. 364), "the lexiconcorresponds to the total of units that forms the languageof a community, and the term ‘lexicon’ was reserved for thelanguage and the term ‘vocabulary’ was reserved for thespeech."

The lexicon of natural languages plays two key roles:to appropriate what is real symbolically, connecting theoutside to the inside of the subject and to cognitivelycategorize the experience in lexical items. This isconsistent with the theory of Sapir-Whorf, which emerged inthe decade of 50/60, which states that "the wholelinguistic system manifests, both in its lexicon and in itsgrammar, a classification and ordering of data from realitythat is typical of this given language and this givenculture" (BIDERMAN, 2001, p.109), that is to say that eachlanguage reflects the reality according to the culture andits own model.

Also according to Whorf, the perception itself thatman has of reality is formed by the language system heuses, "because the existing categories of this languagepredispose the individual to a certain real interpretationof choices" (BIDERMAN, 2001, p. 110). The world presentsitself as impressions, which have to be organized in ourminds, in other words, it is through the word (nomination)that man exercises his ability to abstract and generalizethe subjective through his perception and his experienceswith the world.

The human mind always resets its lexical structure,according to the new connotations of meaning that are beingcontinuously introduced into the lexicon of a language andpoint to new categories. This addition of new learnedwords, unlike the phonological or morphosyntactic system,is an open system, since the individual is always learningnew lexical elements (with their denotations andconnotations) through social interaction with otherindividuals in the same linguistic community or fromoutside it.

In this process, the social and cultural changes,especially in today's globalized world, functions as anetwork and leads to changes in vocabulary uses:

It follows that units or complex lexiconsectors can be marginalized, fall intodisuse and eventually disappear.Conversely, however, terms can beresurrected and can return to circulation,usually with new connotations. Finally, newwords or new meanings of existing words canappear to enrich the lexicon (BIDERMAN,2001, p. 179)

That said, we can highlight that the linguisticuniverse of a language is represented by the lexical unitand the grammatical components. The lexical choice ofspeaker / informant portrays his/her perception of theworld around him/her, so it is easy to understand that thelexicon is connected to the cultural environment of theinformant and the community of which he/she is part. In thesocial interaction between informant and researcher, whichdevelops during the interview (to collect linguistic datafor the lexical-semantic questionnaire) in a face-to-facesituation, the significances of the lexicon are being builtand the community ideology in which the informant isinserted is revealed, as well as their beliefs, customs,culture, and moral and social values at a particular timeand in a given space. In this work, a much greater and more

comprehensive focus is given to the lexicon than that of asimple repository of linguistic knowledge of a community.

The lexical analysis of the corpus collected for theresearch was classified according to Pottier (1978). Tothis linguist, the lexia is a stored lexical unit that isready for use and is divided into four types: simple lexia,compound lexia, complex lexia and the textual lexia. Thesimple lexia corresponds to the "significant functionalunit of speech" (DUBOIS, 2006, p.361), for example: chair,left, now, stop, among others. The compound lexia is theresult of manifested semantic integration: corkscrew, primeminister, bottle-green, among others. The complex lexia isa sequence in lexicalization process such as: state ofsiege, food staples, college town, among others, andfinally, the textual lexia, thus named when the complexlexia reaches the level of a statement or a text: he whowants all, loses all.

5 Sociolinguistics

Languages change and this fact can be best seen bycomparing the way our grandparents and our kids talk. Thechanges are felt not only at the register level, but at thelexicon level, at the phonological level and in grammaticalrules. The variations can be diatopic (when referring tothe geographical area), diastratic (when referring tosocial groups variables such as age, gender, educationetc.) and diaphasic (when referring to the register, thatis to say, formal or informal language). So, if we expectto find a set of regular and static grammar rules shared bymembers of a community, we will be disappointed. "What weobserve is that languages appear to be sensitive tobehavioral differences of the individuals who speak themand present variable forms (concerning individual, socialor regional standards) and these changes manifestthemselves according to its historical evolution"(MARTELOTTA, 2011 p.15). In other words, "the individualis, at the same time, user and modifier of his own

language" (BRANDÃO, 1991), reflecting changes that comefrom the new life situations with which he/she is faced.

These changes were observed in a more relevant waywith the advent of Variational Sociolinguistics. So, thisresearch focused on the study of the lexicon, on variousalternative forms that appear for a given linguisticphenomenon. Thus, the terms and uses of expressions of alanguage, that project the culture and the identity of anindividual / community, are handled in verbal interactionsin communicative situations, in which the subject takes asubjective position in relation to the content they want toconvey, supporting the view of Labov (2008) that languageis heterogeneous and is in constant process of change, butnot their conception of speech community.

Hymes, Wardhaugh and Gumperz, unlike Labov, defendthe heterogeneity of the speech community, since anindividual can participate in a variety of social networks,varying her/his way of speaking, that is to say, in the‘diastratic’, in diatopical or diaphasic aspects.

Supporting the view of the aforementioned linguists,Ronald Wardhaugh (2010) believes that the individual canbelong to different speech communities, identifying withone or another, depending on the circumstances. From thisperspective, there is a relationship between theidentification process and the speech community, which isconsidered to be fluid and dynamic, in agreement with whatwas said earlier about identity, since the subject movesthrough various social groups with which he identifies. Incommunities’ speech, identities are not static and thesubjects are in constant process of identification,hindering the delimitation of the speech community and theresearch focused on the variation phenomenon.

From Ronald Wardhaugh’s perspective, the knowledge ofthe theory of accommodation can be added, which wasdeveloped by Giles and Powesland within the domain of theSocial Psychology, which says that speakers adjust theirlinguistic repertoire and the way they speak to their

interlocutor (BORTONI-RICARDO 2011, p. 107). It is a way toemphasize the intragroup similarity and the intergroupdistinction. Alongside this convergence there is a strategyof compliance and identification.

To the accommodation theory of Giles and Powestand, Iadd the thought of Le Page: that the linguistic variationis a function of a group fellowship, that is to say, thespeaker creates his verbal behavior system so as toresemble that of the group with which he wishes to beidentified at each moment (apud Bortoni-RICARDO, 2011,p.137). These fundaments try to explain why people speak asthey speak in different social situations.

6 Socio-geolinguistics

In Socio-geolinguistics, the lexicon represents theview the subject has of himself and of the world; it alsorepresents the ideology that runs through it, that is tosay, the social, political and cultural aspects by which heviews the community in which he is. Socio-geolinguistics isa relatively new term, employed initially by the ResearchGroup in Dialectology and Geolinguistics at the Universityof São Paulo (Brazil), which means that both geographicaland social aspects are taken into consideration in theanalysis of the collected data. The socio-geolinguisticsaspect of the lexicon, the focus of this study, has to dowith how the lexicon collected from the questionnaire andconversations with the subjects is seen after the datacollection.

Socio-geolinguistics is a relatively new term. Tocoin it, Cristianini (2012) used the word Geolinguisticsand Sociolinguistics, that is to say, referring to thestudy of linguistic behavior determined by socio-culturalrelations with the study of linguistic behavior of membersof a community and how it is determined by the existingsocial, cultural and economic relations:

The term Socio-geolinguistics appears inthe blossoming of the XXI century (in2004), employed initially by the ResearchGroup in Dialectology and Geolinguistics atthe University of São Paulo - GPDG / USP -to designate geolinguistic studies thatconsider both geographical and socialfactors for collection, recording andanalysis of linguistic data (CRISTIANINI,2012, p. 26).

Thus, after data collection and transcription,special attention was devoted to recording the interactionat the very moment of the survey. Special attention waspaid to the speech of the subjects in their interactionwith the researcher and his/her lexical choice, reflectinghis/her ideology, customs, beliefs, how he/she seeshimself/herself and how he/she sees the other.

The socio-geolinguistics works depict culture,ideology, memories and worldview in a language community,in a given geographical area at a given time and representsthe current lexicon used in a language. In Socio-geolinguistics, the interaction assumes a particularimportance since the lexical item is regarded as thereconstruction of the meaning proposed by the community.Intersubjective elements of the relationship betweensubject-interviewee and subject-interviewer were beingexposed not only through the lexical-semantic questionnairebut also through dialogue and conversations in a face-to-face interaction, during the interview.

The lexicon used is seen as an ideological sign(Bakhtin, 2006) because it is the result of socialinteraction, even if it is an interview between aninformant and a researcher. The lexicon obtainedcorresponds to a fragment of reality that transmits theideology of the community in which the informantparticipates, situated in a historic moment, in a givenculture and in a social space, being influenced by otherdiscourses, using a discursive memory. Thus, in the

discourse of the subjects, the meanings of words are notfixed.

7 The research

It can be said that the hinterland migrants from theAmazonas state share traits with the dominant culture andat the same time they present elements that do not belongto this culture. They deal with a dialectical process thatallows them to adapt to the capitalist relations ofproduction (and oral urban standard language) on one handand on the other, maintain their ethnic or migrantidentity. Their vocabulary choice demonstrates this stateof affairs, since it varies according to the socialnetworks in which the individual moves.

This quantitative and qualitative research took intoaccount the assumptions of Variational Sociolinguistics andDialectology and sought to observe how the linguisticrepertoire of caboclos/mestizos from the towns of Tefé,Manacapuru and Itacoatiara behaves after a period of timeliving in the capital (for a minimum of five years). First,we selected criteria for the choice of subject-interviewees, taking into consideration the socialvariables of age, sex and education. For age, weestablished three age groups: 18-35, 36-55, and 56 andover. For genre, we chose both male and female. Foreducation, we stipulated that a range should be selected,from illiterate subjects to those who had completedelementary school. Six people were chosen per county, threemen and three women, for a total of 18 subjects.

The next phase of the research, in loco datacollection, consisted of a lexical-semantic questionnaire,in total 293 questions, which served as a corpus for theanalysis. The questions were designed as follows: questions1 to199 were questions based on Linguistic Atlas ofAmazonas - ALAM (Cruz, 2004); questions 200 to 218 wereadded by the researcher for the lexical apparel field;

question 219 to 266 were based on ALAM; question 267 to 291were based on the book Amazonês (SOUZA, 2011); question 292to 293 were added by the researcher to evaluate theidentity aspect.

The lexical-semantic questionnaire (QSL) encompassedthe following semantic fields:

(I) Physical Environment: (a) Land and Rivers, (b)Atmospheric Phenomena (stars, climate); (II) BioticEnvironment: (a) fauna (birds, fish, reptiles, turtles andmammals), (b) Flora (aquatic and terrestrial); (III)Anthropic Environment: Man (physical, family relationships,food and health, housing, clothing and footwear, beliefs,superstitions and legends, social relations - life cycles,social, popular expressions);

The research is still on-going, but some observationswere made. For example, for question number two of theSemantical-Lexicon Questionnaire – QSL of the research,"What do you call the place where one river ends or meetsanother river?" The most productive lexical item found asan answer was "encontro das águas”6, which, according toPottier, is a complex lexia. Etymologically, this complexlexia should be classified by parts: first, the lexicalitem 'encontro' comes from the Latin ῐncǒntrǎre, whichmeans going cǒntra, and, second, the lexical item 'água'comes from the Latin ǎqua and refers to a colorless,odorless and tasteless liquid that is essential to life,according to the Etymological Dictionary of the PortugueseLanguage (CUNHA, 2010). The concept of this complex lexiain this particular speech community means ‘a place where ariver meets another river'. In ALAM, this question was notproductive and did not generate a lexical letter, orcartogram, which could be used for comparison with the datafrom this study, however, this answer reveals the influenceof physical-geographical aspects in the lives of themigrants in Manaus and also reveals how the river and6 Meeting of the Waters, which is a reference to the meeting of the waters of the Negro River and the Waters of Solimões River which aredifferent in temperature, color and density.

nature are important in their lives, featuring theideological aspect of the lexicon found, as can be checkedin the transcript:

When it ends and meets another river? ... It isthe meeting of the waters ... here ... when yousee, you know, it is the meeting of white waterwith black water (CGA, 2014)

In question number 47, "What is the name of thatstrong and quick light coming out of the clouds that canburn a tree in bad weather?", An interesting response was'corisco' despite the fact that this lexia was not the mostproductive. According to Pottier, is a simple lexia. Thereis the verb ‘coriscar’, which comes from Latin coruscȃre.The lexical item 'corisco' existed since the thirteenthcentury, meaning spark or flash since the sixteenthcentury. It was noticed that the theme of nature isrelevant to the Caboclo in the following transcript:

It is because very often at dawn, whenwe're fishing, right ... so maybe the windchanged because of the star, right ... thenthere is the ‘corisco’ ... corisco is thestone that comes out ..it is a stone shapedlike an ax... where it hits it destroyseverything ... it splits and opens...corisco is the spark already (ACS, 2014).

In question number 229, "kind of dream thatpresupposes someone's death", we can note that the belief,be it folkloric, religious or mystical, is something quiteentrenched in their lives. The dream that foretells deathis something believable, as can be seen in the followingtranscript:

The day my mother died I dreamed of myhouse cracking... when she felt ill ... onthe very day she fell ill ... it was aboutthis time ... she got sick ... she went tothe hospital ... I did not sleep ... I feltall tight here, look ... that tightness,that lack of patience ... I wanted to cryand I couldn´t, I had a knot... my God, I

spent the all night like this... when. ..onthe day she died I had no rest.. it waslike I had a fever ... on the day she diedI slept. ..when I woke up ... screaming ...I woke up screaming and calling for her…then my husband shook me, shook me ... Itold him my mother died ... my house brokehere ... look ... it broke in themiddle ... it broke right up here and downlike that ... it was the grave ... then Iwanted to see her and she was there rightin front of me (MMO, 2014).

I'll just tell you ... when you dream about‘ingá’ ... you get that shelled one withthat bright fruit with seeds …. Then youcan be certain that someone will die ... todream about arapaima.... because you take aarapaima and put it into the canoe ... thatis death ... to dream about your housebreaking ... it means death in yourfamily ... see? To dream about those thingsis death ... of a relative ... aneighbor ... (MLMO, 2014).

In question number 134, "What do you call a personwho has only one leg?", 33% of the subjects-intervieweefrom the cities of Itacoatiara and Manacapuru answered‘saci / Pererê’ as the more productive lexical item forthis question. This is a compound lexia, according toPottier. According to Cunha, it comes from the Tupilanguage, sa'si. It is a legend from Brazilian folklorethat takes the form of a black boy with one leg, using apipe and wearing a small red cap on his head who chasestravelers on the roads. According to Houaiss and Villar(2001), the concept refers to a fantastic black boy withone leg who smokes a pipe and wears a red cap, which is thesource of his magic powers and, according to popularbelief, has fun scaring cattle and freaking out lonelytravelers on the roads, with his long whistles in thenight. Saci-Cererê is another variation for this lexia.This lexical item reflected the relation between thecaboclo and this fantastic popular belief. So when the

subjects were asked about the name of the person who hasonly one leg, the answer ‘saci / pererê’ indicates that themystic is very present in the minds of the caboclo/mestizopeople.

As stated earlier, the research is still in progress,but I should emphasize that only the most productive datain both surveys was taken into account. When making acomparison to ALAM data, it can be stated that 59% of thecaboclos living in Manaus changed their way of speaking,using other lexias than those employed by caboclos/mestizosliving in Tefé, Itacoatiara and Manacapuru. It was observedthat expressions that are similar in other regions of thecountry such as 'up to his neck' co-vary with the typicalform of the region 'to the tucupi'. So does 'tá de bode'7

for 'PMS', 'tontom' for 'scruff or neck', 'maceta' for'large', ‘jerimum’ for 'pumpkin' – perhaps already showingthe effects of globalization. Still with this approach,'avexar' has been found, typically a Northeastern term, asco-variation of 'pegar o beco8', typically Amazonian.

8 Conclusion

It was possible to notice that there was a change inthe linguistic repertoire of migrants who came from thecities of Tefé, Manacapuru and Itacoatiara, pointing to alinguistic change, since 59% of the respondents living inManaus changed the lexicon they use in social interactions.However, this linguistic change does not imply ethnicchange, since all subjects in this research felt proud oftheir caboclo origin by which they self-identify (it wasverified by questions 292 and 293 which deal specificallywith identity), which, according to Castells classificationrefers to the identity of resistance.

These are individuals who are in devalued positions,seeking to survive in the big city, individuals withdifferent values from those of the existing socialinstitutions. The vast majority has a very restricted7 Local expression used to designate girls´ menstruation8 Local expression that means ‘to be in a hurry’

social network, usually connected to the family, workcolleagues and neighbors, with no desire for upward socialmobility. Many were brought to the capital in search ofbetter work, health and education conditions, but theircurrent living conditions are fragile and limited, sincemost of them do not have adequate qualifications for socialand work demands. However, for further conclusions, it isnecessary to wait for the completion of the analysis, aswell as new research to understand how the current languageproductions relate to the sociological situation of thespeakers.

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