Studies and Notes on the Ítalo-paulistano Dialect: a Critical Assessment

Abstract

The so-called Ítalo-Paulistano dialect, a presumed contact language variety that emerged in the context of Italian migration in São Paulo during the first decades of the 20th century, is frequently mentioned by scholars and writers. Of this dialect, however, we have practically no consistent documentary record. A small number of studies or notes are used as a basis to recognize its existence. This article carries out a critical assessment of this set of studies and notes, identifying the definition of dialect that each author uses and how they interpret the linguistic context of São Paulo, especially in regard to the population of Italian origin. In the same sense, we evaluate how these studies approach the problem of data collection and how their procedure is related to a plurality of meanings of the term dialect and an imprecise delimitation of the object. Our main objective is to identify the premises and foundations of these studies and relate them to the theoretical context of dialect studies in Brazil, especially from Amadeu Amaral’s O dialecto caipira (1920), and with the consolidation of the Ítalo-Paulistano dialect classification to refer to literary representations of the language of the Italo-Paulistanos in comic texts such as those by Juó Bananére or in the chronicles of Alcântara Machado.