The current work analyzes the linguistic beliefs and attitudes of natural speakers from two cities in the state of Paraná: Londrina, in the Northern region, and Pitanga, located in the center of the state. These two cities present speeches that distinguish from each other due to phonetic phenomena, one of which consists in the realization of the final unstressed front vowel /e/ and its variants [i] and [e], identified as dialectal characteristics: the high vowel in Londrina and the maintained mid vowel in Pitanga. Starting with these two differences and based on the theoretical-methodological principles stemming from Sociolinguistics, as well as on research on Linguistic Beliefs and Attitudes (LAMBERT; LAMBERT, 1968; LABOV, 1976; LÓPEZ MORALES, 1993; MORENO FERNÁNDEZ, 1998; CALVET, 2004; SILVA, 2010; BOTASSINI, 2013), the attitudes of 24 informants (twelve from each city) were analyzed in face of their speech and the other's speech. The results indicate the presence of linguistic prejudice related to the subdialect from Pitanga and, on the other hand, high value attributed to the speech from Londrina, manifested by all the informants and supported, mainly, by social coercions perceived in the two cities.
Linguistic beliefs and attitudes; Linguistic prejudice; Subdialects from Paraná
