Traces of memory and writing from the Brazilian colonial period in an official letter written in the eighteenth Century

• Main Author: Vanessa Regina Duarte Xavier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade de São Paulo 2013-02-01
• Series: Filologia e Linguística Portuguesa
• Subjects: Philology; History; Memory; Graphematic Variation
• Online Access: http://www.revistas.usp.br/flp/article/view/59896

This paper is an analysis of an official letter from the eighteenth century, detailing lexias showing the cultural aspects of the captaincy of Goiás in the colonial pe­riod of Brazil, upheld by Salles (1992). The semi-diplomatic edition of the letter was based on criteria available in Megale and Toledo Neto (2005) and its objective was to compose a reliable source of linguistic research. We also comment on the official letter and on how the social hierarchy of the period influenced the structure of discourse (Berlinck; Bar­bosa; Marine, 2008). And, finally, we highlight some graphematic variation in the text, in­dicating that official documents are also helpful in studies of linguistic variation, because the writing contained in them reveals the influence of orality (Mattos and Silva, 2008).