A Carne

Notes about the black in the language

Abstract

This article takes as material for examination the novel A Carne, a polemic book by Júlio Ribeiro, published for the first time in 1888. The selection of this book occurred because, in addition to the text, it brings knowledge about the language. Especially in the Glossary at the end of the book. This study aims to investigate the lexis, in Brazil, about the culture and languages of African origin, shown mainly in the Glossary. The research focus was motivated by the relevance of the culture of African ancestry in the constitution of Brazilian culture and by the history of delation and silencing.  To achieve these objectives, we compared the entries in dictionaries after and before the publication of A Carne and analyse the entry's development in the body of the text. We take as corpus the following entries: contra, mandinga, manipanso, mganga, cousa feita and vira-virando. This research helps us to comprehend the relevance of Ribeiro's novel in linguistics studies and, above all, to studies that highlight the large portion of the enslaved in the formation of the Brazilian language and culture.