Abstract

This study investigates the attitudes of Brazilian university students in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to three different varieties of Portuguese: that of Rio de Janeiro, that of São Paulo, and that of an American. The results suggest that speakers from São Paulo are more favorably judged than are those from either Rio de Janeiro or from abroad in relation to solidarity or attraction, independent of the origin of the judges, which would suggest that the speech of São Paulo tends to be the national prestige dialect; moreover, foreign speakers receive the highest status rankings. These results should be interpreted with caution, however, due to problems in the design of the study.

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