Photographs as methodological strategies: searching for Brazilian, Mozambican and Angolan addressing pronominal forms

Brazil, Mozambique and Angola share the Portuguese language. However, this linguistic system is updated in particular ways according to each national context and its idiosyncrasies. In particular, this situation is valid when observing the pronoun usage of the Portuguese language in its Brazilian, Angolan and Mozambican varieties. When considering only situations of dialogue, the system offers personal pronouns that include pragmatic resource courtesy, intimacy, politeness, hierarchical distance etc. in ways as you and Mr. / Mrs.. In addition to these pronoun forms, it is still systemically available to the speaker the absence of the pronoun, in which the personal brand is demonstrated by the verbal ending. For the purposes of comparative research between the three varieties of Portuguese, some methodological choices were decisive. In particular, it became imperative to rescue a methodology used by Brazilian researchers in the 1980s. This is the use of photographs as a motivator for the interviews with informants. From the social profiles of the selected image, it was possible to conduct the interviews with informants. The proposal made to them was that they would be indicated, for each image, a specific statement containing a request about address, reference to a person, the particular product price etc. Having understood the instruction, the informant established a dialogue with the person of the picture – most informants readily understand the proposal of the interview and naturally produced various addressing forms. In general, it is possible to establish some trends in the linguistic behavior of respondents from the same country, supporting the assertion that the Brazilian, Mozambican and Angolan Portuguese are autonomous linguistic varieties.