Usage and social assessment of Portuguese in Mozambique

Abstract

From sociolinguistic assumptions about issues involving linguistic variations that have direct implications on language teaching and learning, the paper falls on the research line about language and social practices. The objective is to analyse the linguistic attitudes that teachers of Portuguese who hold university degree have towards the norm they and their students use. As far as theoretical support is concerned, the research takes as reference the distinction between the concepts of polite norm and standard norm; the concept of sociolinguistic norm that allows the systematisation of linguistic behaviour, assessment of the linguistic behaviour and convergence of processes of linguistic change. Methodologically, as instrument of data collection, it was used a questionnaire designed on the basis of three categories: uses of Portuguese; acceptance of Portuguese; and assessment of informants’ and their students’ level of competence. The results related to the uses of Portuguese show that there are differences between European and Mozambican Portuguese, but these differences are more expressed at semantic and phonological level than at syntactic and morphosyntactic level. As far as acceptance of Portuguese is concerned, the assessment is positive, in a way that they agree with the need of adapting European Portuguese to the Mozambican context through inclusion, in teaching, of the structures already consolidated in speaking. In relation to linguistic competences, the informants assess their competence as being excellent and their students’ as being weak, reflecting that linguistic competence is only limited to the mastery of grammatical structure but not to a simultaneous development of discursive, sociolinguistic and strategic abilities in language usage.

Keywords: linguistic norm, linguistic variation, social assessment.