Dissertation Research: Slang and the Social Construction of Race and Identity Among Brazilian Portuguese Adolescents

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This project involves the dissertation research of an anthropological linguist from Stanford University. The study explores how Brazilian teenagers engage with and experience race through the innovation and use of slang. Through a deep, ethnographic look at one community of speakers, this lexical study investigates how Brazilian teenagers encode race and construct identity through slang. Participant observation will be conducted inside and outside of three schools to record language in practice, creating one of the first ethnographies of slang. Qualitative and discourse methods of linguistic analysis will be used to illustrate how adolescents develop and manipulate slang to create social meaning. The utility of this research is that it will advance our understanding of how race is experienced and racism produced in a Brazilian context; it will show how the lexicon articulates cultural discourses, revealing what race really `means` to speakers as they explain their use of slang to the investigator; and the research will show how such popular practices as slang speak to pressing social issues among youth. By advancing our understanding of the significant issues of race, slang and adolescence, the project will provide information useful towards understanding these issues in our own society. In addition the project contributes to our expertise about this important area of the world, and adds to the training of a young social scientist.