Lexical and semantic variation in contemporary spoken Portuguese in urban Funchal and rural areas of Madeira Island

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a dialectal and sociolinguistic approach and description of the use of the lexical and semantic regionalisms in contemporary spoken Portuguese in urban Funchal (the capital of Madeira) and in four rural areas of the island. The study of the lexicon and its semantic variation is based on recent samples of a semasiological questionnaire, applied to stratified informants by sex/gender, age group and level of education. The correlation of the results with the extralinguistic factors, geographical origin of the respondents on the island and sociocultural variables from the qualitative analysis and the quantitative point of view confirm that speakers from urban areas are less conservative than those from rural areas and showed flexibility and variability as well as stability of lexical meanings, two opposite and complementary lexicon characteristics. The traditional lexicon of Madeira studied highlights the coexistence of dialectal forms, some of them common to the Azores and Brazil, with European Portuguese standard variants. Therefore, the qualitative and the quantitative expression of the knowledge of Madeiran regionalisms and their lexical and semantic variations expose their vitality and support the heterogeneity of the European Portuguese language and the identity of the Portuguese spoken on Madeira Island.