Politically Correct Language: Linguistc Variables for Persons with Disabilities, Black and Homosexual in a Speaking Community

Abstract

The politically correct language (PCL) proposes the substitution of forms considered pejorative. In this sense, are the linguistic variants of this language modality incorporated into the speech of ordinary people? This is the research question that guides this work. The objective of this study is to verify whether the forms proposed by the PCL are incorporated in a speech community in relation to the person with disabilities, black and homosexual. This work is based on the theoretical-methodological principles of sociolinguistic research and studies on linguistic beliefs and attitudes, with field research. The corpus consists of eight informants, stratified by: sex, age group and education. For the field research, a specific questionnaire was developed from images of the three segments that make up the study. From the images, the linguistic variants presented by the informants were cataloged. The three themes registered 228 occurrences with 26 linguistic variants. Among the main results are: i) the belief influences the speaker’s linguistic attitude in the choice of their variants; ii) even if speakers do not dominate the variants proposed by the PCL, they show their beliefs when speaking; iii) the PCL variants are more incorporated by informants with higher education.

Keywords

• sociolinguistic research
• linguistic belief
• politically correct language