Character Speeches in Brazilian Soap Operas: if They Make People Laugh, They Don’t Represent Us

ABSTRACT: Knowing the scope of television for the dissemination of information, entertainment, and ideologies, this paper investigates the characterization of two characters’ speech features from two Brazilian soap opera works: O Sétimo Guardião ( 2018), and Verdades Secretas ( 2015), seeking to recognize if the representation can lead viewers to a negative evaluation of characters based on how they express themselves by speaking, or if the representation legitimizes speech as mark of identity. We based the analyses on the Sociolinguistics studies, especially those of Labov ( 2008), Pagotto ( 2004), Bortoni-Ricardo ( 2009, 2011), and Bagno ( 2015). By using qualitative research following the method proposed by Bortoni-Ricardo ( 2009), in which the analyzed speakers are allocated in points of imaginary lines according to their linguistic expression, especially in the “urbanization continuum”, we could conclude that one of the television narratives brings caricature traits, providing opportunities for negative evaluations, whereas the other brings out representation since it reliably shows the represented identities.