Variable morphosyntactic phenomena

evaluation and teaching

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing how teachers and Portuguese speakers in general assess variable morphosyntactic structures and what sociolinguistic status each structure receives (stereotype, marker or indicator). The corpus consists of an essay corrected by ten teachers and ten other carioca speakers. The research is mainly based on the assumptions of Variationist Sociolinguistics (WEINREICH, LABOV, HERZOG, 1968; LABOV, 1972) and aims at (i) defining the status of specific morphosyntactic structures; (ii) verifying which structures are more stigmatized and which are not, so that it may be possible to describe what educated individuals take as the standard norm and (iii) establishing the relationship between the evaluation issue and the Portuguese teaching. Based on the analysis results, we believe that, in the scope of standard norm, there is no compatibility between participants´choice and the grammatical norm; in other words, the participants, teachers or not, use particular criteria in their idealization of linguistic standard (standard norm) and not just what is proposed in traditional manuals (grammatical norm). Based on these results, it is proposed that teaching activities should consider educated varieties as a starting point for the establishment of the standard norm in a school context.