Geolinguistic Approaches to the Description of Brazilian Portuguese Varieties: Contactual, Migrational, and Historical-Social Aspects

Abstract

This paper proposes a theoretical and methodological review of Brazilian Geolinguistics, presenting three emerging lines of approach: contactual, migrational, and historical-social. Grounded in Pluridimensional and Relational Dialectology (Radtke; Thun, 1996), the study assumes that social and historical dimensions are inseparable from linguistic variation, requiring the understanding of language within its contexts of mobility, contact, and sociocultural formation. The contactual approach is analyzed as the axis that redefines traditional Geolinguistics by incorporating the study of languages in contact and the mutual influence among linguistic varieties. In southern Brazil, projects such as the Atlas Linguístico-Etnográfico da Região Sul (ALERS) and the Atlas Linguístico-Contatual das Minorias Alemãs na Bacia do Prata (ALMA-H) stand out, both aimed at describing Portuguese in contact with immigration languages. In the North, studies by Sanches (2020), Guedes (2017), and Rodrigues (2017) highlight the interinfluence between Portuguese and indigenous languages, as well as processes of linguistic replacement and hybridization. The migrational approach broadens the analytical perspective by including the diatopic-kinetic dimension, which compares the linguistic behavior of stable and mobile groups (topostatic and topodynamic). Research conducted by Figueiredo (2014), Cuba (2015), Silva (2018), and Meurer (2022) demonstrates how population mobility and urban-rural continuums influence phonetic-phonological and lexical phenomena. The process of covariation, understood as the coexistence of regional and supraregional variants, is interpreted as a reflection of migrational dynamics and the complex sociolinguistic fabric of Brazil. Finally, the historical-social approach focuses on historical-linguistic routes. In this line, the Atlas Linguístico da Rota dos Tropeiros (Chofard, 2023) exemplifies how historical paths and events can define dialectal areas and explain intervarietal contacts between the São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul varieties. It is concluded that these three approaches do not compete but rather complement each other, consolidating Brazilian Geolinguistics as a pluridimensional science open to new analytical perspectives.