44 Augusto Soares da Silva
nada têm a ver historicamente com o berço da língua, se acham destinadas a
uma progressiva fragmentação interna. [‘The Latin model seems to give le-
gitimacy to the forecast that languages like English or Portuguese, which
are spoken in extended areas inhabited by people who are not historically
related to the cradle of the language, are destined to progressive internal
fragmentation’] (Castro 1986: 45)Nevertheless, even the most detailed comparative studies of EP and BP
(Brandão and Mota 2003; Peres and Kato 2001, 2004) do not tackle the
issue of convergence/divergence.
The object of study is a specific form of lexical variation, namely formal
onomasiological variation (Geeraerts, Grondelaers, and Bakema 1994).
Onomasiological variation is formal when many different terms are used to
refer to the same entity. This variation is not due to a different conceptual
classification of the same entity, but rather to the use of many different
synonymous terms, i.e. denotational synonyms, to refer to the same con-
cept. For example, the variation between avançado, atacante and dianteiro
for the referent ‘forward’ is formal, while the variation between avançado
‘forward’ and jogador ‘player’ is conceptual. Formal onomasiological vari-
ation is particularly interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view because
the use of denotational synonyms generally gives some hints as to the rela-
tionships existing between language varieties. Indeed, denotational syn-
onyms are likely to reveal sociolinguistic differences, i.e. regional, social,
stylistic and pragmatic-discoursal differences, and it is these differences
that motivate the very existence and competition of lectal varieties. Formal
onomasiological variation, of which contextual variation is an integral part,
is essentially the most specific subject of sociolexicology and of this study.
Data was gathered from the lexical fields of football and fa-
shion/clothing due to their popularity and the fact that they are susceptible
to the influence of foreign languages. A third lexical field is still under
study – health. The empirical background of this sociolexicological study
consists of several thousand observations of the use of denotational syn-
onyms which designate 43 nominal concepts from football and clothing
terminologies.
Material was extracted from three different sources: (i) sports newspa-
pers and fashion magazines from the early years of the 1950s, 1970s and
1990s/2000s; (ii) Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels related to football;
and (iii) labels and price tags pictured from shop windows in two Portu-
guese and Brazilian towns respectively. Material gathered from (i) can help
to answer the question of convergence/divergence while material collected