META-ANALYSIS OF VERBAL NEGATION STUDIES IN THE NORTHEAST AND SOUTHEAST REGIONS: INVESTIGATION OF THE RELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CONDITIONINGS

Abstract

The study of variable linguistic phenomena is a constantly expanding area of research in Brazil, mainly within the field of Variationist Sociolinguistics (Labov, 2008). However, with the profusion of studies at the most diverse grammatical levels, Sociolinguistics needs methods for systematizing research on each topic in order to find possible gaps and make generalizations. Among them, the systematic review with meta-analysis is considered the one with the greatest explanatory power (Freitag, 2021). In this context, based on verbal negation, this work aimed to investigate the relevance of three social conditionings in a meta-analysis, namely: sex/gender, education and age group. To do this, it was necessary to limit the analysis to two regions, Northeast and Southeast, due to the historical interrelationship between them (Villa, 2017). As results of this meta-analysis, we found low or no influence of “sex/gender”, a significant influence of “education” and low or no influence of “age group”. Therefore, the work contributed to the expansion of works that deal with meta-analysis in Variationist Sociolinguistics, pointing to elements that need to be standardized so that the comparison between studies of urban regions, mainly, is better executed and the results are better systematized.