The Diachrony of Pronouns of Address in 20th-century European Portuguese

The system of pronouns of address in Portuguese is known for its complexity. Although many investigations (mainly case studies) on Brazilian Portuguese have been carried out to this respect, there is lack of in-depth studies about the European variety. In this article, we aim to provide the history of the system of pronouns of address in European Portuguese throughout the 20th century, by analyzing dialect data pertaining to three sociolinguistic corpora. The results highlight that the 20th century meant a time with profound changes in Portugal’s society, since it represents a stage in which European Portuguese established a new paradigm that favoured standard responses and pragmatic solidarity. However, this variety is still inclined to pragmatic distance, for the data reveal that it has also come up with new strategies to maintain deference as the unmarked politeness strategy.

CITY WEDDINGS IN DAGHESTAN: A NEW VERSION OF OLD TRADITION, OR ADAPTATION TO GLOBAL TRENDS OF URBANIZATION?

Daghestan’s urban culture, in its Russian–European variety, is a relatively new phenomenon. Until the 1970’s, weddings in cities have been celebrated only by hereditary citizens, i.e. Russians, Armenians, Jews, Azerbaijanis, Kumyks, occasionally, while the rest of the city residents preferred to go to their home villages and play weddings there, after which the bride and groom would return if they were going to live in the city. Since the 1990’s, with the growth of the urban population due to the influx of the rural population, this tradition has disappeared in Daghestan, as rural residents often have to come to the city to celebrate the wedding.This article is based on ethnographic materials identified through field observation included. The authors focus on the presentation of the preserved traditional elements of urban wedding rituals and the new ritual and other components that have appeared in recent decades. The analysis of the modern family and public holiday, which the wedding has always been for the peoples of Daghestan, demonstrates the close connection between local traditions and Russian-European innovations, under the influence of various factors. Modern city weddings in Daghestan find in different cities a different ratio between the secular and Islamic components in wedding ceremonies. The authors consider the modern wedding in the cities of Daghestan as a multicomponent ceremony, consisting traditionally of preliminary preparations, the wedding itself and the ceremonies after the wedding.The innovations used in urban wedding rituals are an expression of value orientations, ethnic, ethical, aesthetic, and ethnocultural preferences of modern Daghestan citizens.Under the conditions of ethnocultural dynamics influenced by the intensive migration of the population from the mountains to the plain, where all the modern Daghestan cities are located, the “urban culture” radically transforms not only the marriage traditions, but also the very perception of these traditions. A look at the ratio of the traditional and the modern in the urban wedding rituals is now in each generation its own. And perhaps it is partly subjective and needs to be discussed.

Tableaux Vivants, Early Cinema, and Beauty-as-Attraction

This article offers a case study in intermediality and explores relationships between tableaux vivants performances and early cinema around 1900. It locates processes of intermedial exchange not only at the level of form but also at the level of modes of address and reception. More specifically, the study is concerned with how bourgeois notions of beauty were transferred to the film image and reconciled with the attraction value of cinema. As a discussion of early film theory reveals, the concept of “beauty in film” depended on a taming of filmic motion, something that had already been realized in performance practices of tableaux vivants. In the subsequent analysis of the cultural context of tableaux vivants in European variety theatres, I outline a specific mode of address, which I term “beauty-as-attraction:” an overlap of the older aesthetics of the beautiful and the more modern aesthetics of attraction. Through concluding film analysis, I show how tableaux vivants became a model and source of inspiration for early cinema, thus bringing to fruition the two-fold address of beauty-as-attraction in a new media context.

The politeness of você in European Portuguese

The employment of você in current European Portuguese is not clear. Although Brazilian Portuguese has specialised it as an informal pronoun in certain geographical areas within the country, the European variety presents its use in contexts which seem to be contradictory: informal address, formal address and pejorative address. Due to the lack of an in-depth study on the evolution of this form, we have collected data from three different corpora that reflect the real usage of você throughout the twentieth century, since it is from the nineteenth century that você started specialising as an informal pronoun. The results show a decreasing use of this pronoun and a certain degree of polyvalence due to a gradual marginalisation experienced for over one hundred years. As a consequence, the strategy of null subject plus 3sg has emerged as the unmarked politeness strategy in current European Portuguese.

Empréstimo lexical, conceptualização e variação: Para a abordagem sociocognitiva e socioletométrica dos estrangeirismos no português

This paper first advocates an onomasiological, concept-based and socio-cognitive approach to lexical borrowing, expanding the current loanword research from lexical items towards concepts. Second, it presents a corpusbased and concept-based sociolectometrical study on differences in the use of loanwords in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese and their impact on diachronic lexical variation between the two national varieties. In the first part, the main topics and contributions of the Cognitive Sociolinguistic perspective on borrowability, and concept-based sociolectometrical methods of measuring variation in the success of loanwords are highlighted. In the second part, English and French loanwords in the field of football and clothing terminologies are analyzed through possible receptor Portuguese equivalents and advanced corpus-based sociolectometrical measures, such as featural measures (calculating the proportion of terms possessing a special feature) and uniformity measures (calculating onomasiological homogeneity and convergence/divergence between language varieties). These measures are based on onomasiological profiles, i.e. sets of alternative synonymous terms, together with their frequencies. As a development of our previous research on lexical convergence and divergence between European and Brazilian Portuguese (Soares da Silva 2010), the data include thousands of observations of the usage of alternative terms to refer to 43 football and clothing concepts. Corpus material was extracted from sports newspapers and fashion magazines from the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s/2000s, Internet chats related to football, and labels and price tags pictured from clothes shop windows. Football and clothing concepts confirm the hypothesis that the influence of foreign languages is stronger in the Brazilian variety than in the European variety. The use of loanwords has contributed towards onomasiological heterogeneity within and across the two national varieties in the last 60 years.

Two new species of Adontorhina Berry, 1947 (Bivalvia: Thyasiridae) from the Porcupine Bank, off the west coast of Ireland

A minute bivalve, Adontorhina keegani, new species (Thyasiridae) is described from the Porcupine Bank, west of Ireland. The new species occurs between 300 and 789 m on the continental slope. The shell is elongate and compressed, with a flattened posterior and complete lack of radial sulcus. The shell has a hinge margin bearing irregular granules and noticeably low umbones, located in the posterior. Hydroids were found growing on the margins of the shell, indicating a shallow burrowing habit. Adontorhina similis, new species, was previously recognized as a European variety of Mendicula pygmaea Verrill & Bush, 1898, but is here shown to be a distinct species. The hinge bears irregular granules, which precludes classification as a Mendicula species. The shell is elongate, moderately inflated with prominent umbones and a pointed posterior margin. The posterior flank of the shell is flattened and does not bear hydroids. In comparison with previously described species of Adontorhina, the new species are more elongate and less inflated.

How to write a history of Europe: Europe, Europes, Eurasia

This article looks at the history of European culture from three angles, those of European uniqueness, European variety and European consciousness. The first section discusses the question of whether the fundamental unit of study, for cultural as well as economic historians, is not Eurasia. The second section is concerned with cultural divisions within Europe, with Europes in the plural. It asks whether it is more illuminating to distinguish two Europes (like Leopold von Ranke), or three (like Jenő Szűcs), or even five (like Hugo Hassinger), and examine both centripetal and centrifugal forces in early modern history. The final section deals with the history of the idea of Europe, or more exactly with the rise of consciousness of being European, as it is revealed in early modern histories, geographies, journals and newspapers.

Foreign Influences on Bengali Revolutionary Terrorism 1902–1908

Writing to John Morley, the Secretary of State for India, a few days after the first terrorist bomb was thrown by a Bengali, the Viceroy Lord Minto declared that the conspirators aimed ‘at the furtherance of murderous methods hitherto unknown in India which have been imported from the West, and which the imitative Bengali has childishly accepted’.This notion later was taken up and developed by Times correspondent Valentine Chirol, who wrote that Bengalis had ‘of all Indians been the most slavish imitators of the West, as represented, at any rate, by the Irish Fenian and the Russian anarchist’. Chirol went on to say that ‘European works on various periods of revolutionary history figure almost invariably amongst seizures of a far more compromising character whenever the Indian police raids some centre of Nationalist activity.’ This indicated that Bengali revolutionary terrorism was simply a takeoff on the European variety. The only indigenous element in it was the dangerous infusion of Hindu religious fanaticism.