The Urbanization of Rural Dialect Speakers

Download or read book The Urbanization of Rural Dialect Speakers written by Stella Maris Bortoni-Ricardo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates, from a linguistic point of view, how rural migrants adjust to an urban environment. The focus of Dr Bortoni-Ricardo's study is speakers of Caipira, a dialect of Brazilian Portuguese, who moved into a satellite city of Brasilia. The volume examines in careful detail the historical and synchronic sociolinguistic background of the migrants and the changes that have taken place in their linguistic repertoire, with particular emphasis on phonological variables. Both the theoretical framework and novel methodology employed here derive from the assumption that there are statistically measurable relations between the characteristics of a person's social network and his/her linguistic behaviour. The volume will thus be of interest to all readers, whether linguists, psychologists or anthropologists, interested in language accommodation. As an empirical study of cross-cultural communication problems, it will also be of value to social scientists concerned with the process of rural-urban migration.