Universidade Federal Fluminense – UFF

Bianca Corrêa dos Santos

Assignment 3

November
2019
 The role of language as a tool to resist

Establishing rules for grammar and a common language in a country is

important for the relationship between people of a country and as a culture element
that bond people together as a nation. The problem is that those rules are usually
used to oppress and belittle differents dialects, idiolects and sociolects. The
discourse of the “correct way of speaking” is usually associated with the social class
division, once that it would be a tool only available through literacy, widely
associated with schooling.

It is important to understand that communication goes beyond rules and

grammar, it is the process of understanding each others, recognizing variations and
knowing how to adapt your vocabulary in order to make the communication process
efficient. Recognize the language dynamism is accept and respect all the differents
aspects that a language can acquire.

Brazilian people drove crazy when at ENEM test they found a question asking
about the Pajubá dialect, no one was expecting that. The language seemed strange
and not a reality in Brazil, but nowadays, people use it in everyday life. Pajubá is a
dialect that was spoke only for the LGBTQ+ community, it is a mix of informal
language, Nagô and Iorubá language (ethnic groups that were brought to Brazil from
Africa during the slavery).

Nowadays, we see on the internet and informal conversations words like

“Mona”, “lacre”, “uó”, “babado” and so on. These words came from Pajubá and
before becoming widely used, Pajubá was a survivor tool. Back in the 80’s the
LGBTQ+ community was largely persecuted by the police and the government. In
São Paulo 1987 there was an operation called “Operação tarântula”, the aim was to
persecute the LGBTQ+ people with the excuse of a hunt against HIV, the way that
the community found to survive throughout this operation was communicating with
each others using Pajubá, so they could warn each others about the police..

Besides that, Pajubá tries to break the heteronormativity of language, the

community usually change the male end in words and put an “a” (that would be a
female form). Pajubá also attacks the moralistic ideals about drugs and sex, using a
big variety of words to describe sex in all its forms and not only heterosexual sex, for
example. More than a LGBTQ+ dialect, Pajubá is an instrument to challenge the
rules of gender and sexuality, a way of make fun or “gongar” the rules that oppress
the minority. It is an attempt to create an identity to a historically oppressed
community.

This is an specific phenomenon in Brazil with the LGBTQ+ community that

shows how language can be used as a tool to resist, as a way to create an identity,
to embrace the community and to create a sense of pride for people that has been
so much oppressed. Also, this is not only about LGBTQ+ community in Brazil, but
about all the oppressed communities that along history fought and found a way to
stand up and speak their own languages, to be proud of themselves and to resist the
straight white male society.