Female chief and female president: the marking of feminine gender and its social reflexes

Abstract

The inflection of gender is a linguistic phenomenon that presents irregularities and which its variation divides speakers and linguists. The following forms are presented in dictionaries of Portuguese language and in grammar books (Fernão de Oliveira, 1536; Barbosa, 1822; Said Ali, 1931; BECHARA, 2009; CUNHA; CINTRA, 2008): the variants without inflection “chefe” and “presidente” and the inflected variants “chefa” and “presidenta”. The variety of forms used reveals uncertainty of the speakers and demonstrates that this is a phenomenon that goes beyond Linguistics but that reflects social stigma and patterns. This work is the result of the Master’s thesis of the author (SANTANA, 2015) in which are presented the forms to the concepts “leading woman” and “woman in the presidency” identified in 344 interviewees from 77 cities in the Northeast region of Brazil according the methodological principles of Pluridimensional Geolinguistic (CARDOSO, 2010; CHAMBERS; TRUDGILL, 1994) and Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 2008 [1972]). The research used the linguistic corpus composed by the Projeto Atlas Linguístico do Brasil through in loco application of its linguistic questionnaire (COMITÊ NACIONAL DO PROJETO ALiB, 2001). The objectives were to verify the linguistic uses and the possibilities to address gender in Brazilian Portuguese and to consider the gender studies demonstrating the sociolinguistic constraints of the variables.