The use of the vocatives bicha and viado by gay men from the countryside: identity and social network

Abstract

This article aimed to study the use of vocatives from speech data of a marginalized community. To achieve this, we investigated the speech of nine homosexual cis men from the hinterland of Pernambuco, in three different contexts of interaction. We specifically studied the vocatives bicha and viado, which are usually pejorative adjectives when used by a person outside the community, but which constitute a form of treatment and even reception when used by the community, indexing the second person to the group. This research uses as theoretical and methodological support the Theory of Linguistic Variation (LABOV, 2001), making use of the third wave of sociolinguistic studies.We noticed that i) the informants show stylistic variation when there is a change of the context of interaction; ii) the context of interaction with friends favors the productivity of vocatives and the informants' social network interferes with their uses; iii) the vocatives bicha and viado express a mark of identity and/or affiliation to a specific group, confirming our hypothesis; finally, we saw that iv) individual identity or group identity performed by using the linguistic uses are built in social practices as a form of resistance and maintenance of a social identity.