ANÁLISE DA VARIAÇÃO LINGUÍSTICA EM OLIVER TWIST

Abstract

Some writers seek, by means of linguistic resources, to bring the language closer to concrete situations of use associated with a particular context. Therefore, the presence of linguistic variation, especially the diastratic variation representative of the different social strata, in the speeches of Oliver Twist’s characters (1837-1839), by Charles Dickens, aims to present an overview of the historical, socioeconomic and cultural context of Victorian England. Based on this close relation between literary studies and Sociolinguistics, the present research, of qualitative approach and interpretative nature, aims to analyze the referred classic from the perspective of the Theory of Linguistic Variation developed by the sociolinguist William Labov in the 60s. For this purpose, we structured the work into three chapters, the first dedicated to the life and work of the English writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870), the historical context of Dickensian literature and the social criticism in the book; then, we present the fundamental propositions of Labov's Theory of Variation, which serves as a theoretical basis for the third and last chapter, in which fragments of the speech of four characters, as of a group that maintains the same discursive characteristics, are analyzed and discussed in light of the variationist perspective. The results of the data analysis demonstrate the massive presence of social variation in the speech of the characters, which is characterized by oral marks, norm deviation, as well as the use of slang that belongs to a particular social group.