The contribution of José de Alencar, Eça de Queirós and Machado de Assis to a linguistic theory at the turn of the nineteenth century

Abstract

Eça de Queirós left us, through an almost heteronym (Fradique Mendes), two letters that sarcastically summarize the criticism he received throughout his literary career, regarding the linguistic aspects of his prose. The two basic themes are the language-national identity binomial and linguistic variation, mainly in the lexical scope. However, since 1865 Alencar, in Brazil. used Whitney’s sociological arguments in defense of the Brazilian variant and, in a certain way, anticipated Rousselot’s phonic linguistics. Machado de Assis was responsible for developing notions around the grammar of use.

Keywords
linguistic theory; paratexts; nineteenth century linguistics