A hipercorreção na escrita de alunos do 7º ano do ensino fundamental: um destaque para a troca da semivogal /u/ pelo grafema "l" em posição de coda silábica

Abstract

The teaching of spelling in school has been a challenge for the Portuguese Language teacher, since the mastering of the written forms is not an immediate process, but is achieved through practice and the reflection of the language. Often, the concept of mistake, adopted by school, in fact, consists of sound changes called of phonological process, common in the process of written language appropriation, and more specifically, language acquisition as highlighted by Garcia (2004), or “hypotheses that students raise about writing” according to Cagliari (2009, p.244). In other words, the spelling mistakes can be considered as support, an important tool for the construction of written language. The hypercorrection, which is the focus of this research is a spelling deviation conceptualized as an exaggerated attempt of correction, that is, to correct what is not needed. This phenomenon takes place when the student understands as incorrect a correct form of the language and changes it for another one that he considers as adequate, aiming to reach the socially prestigious standard. Hypercorrection to Labov (2008, p162) results from linguistic insecurity motivated by social pressures taking the student to an exaggerated attempt of correction, leading to correct what is not necessary to be corrected. In texts produced by students of 7th grade of elementary school, a marked recurrence was identified in writing, the exchange of the semivowel /u/ for the grapheme “l” in coda position, that is, at the end of the syllable of verbs inflected in the 3rd person of singular of the past perfect tense of the indicative mode (jogol, buscol, partil, in the place of “jogou”, “buscou” and “partiu”, for example). The objectives of this work are: to point out and quantify the occurrences of this spelling mistake, to verify the presence of this phenomenon in the students' writing, to describe the phonological contexts that explain this process, leading to a reflection on the spelling system of the Portuguese language. This is a bibliographic research since is grounded in the studies of authors as Bisol (2014), Câmara Jr (1996), Hora (2009), Morais (2010), Cagliari (1999), Labov (2008), Bortone and Alves(2014), among others, as well as quali-quantitative, since presents quantifiable results, through textual productions and activities involving the phenomenon under study, beyond containing data evaluation seeking to understand and analyze the process of exchanging the semivowel /u/ by the consonant “l” in the texts produced by elementary school students, and field research, since was carried out with 7th grade students of a municipal school from Teresina, Piauí, constituting a research field to applicability of this spelling deviation study.