O cocar, a coroa e o chapéu de couro: desdobramentos da história social linguística da família Kariri nos Sertões-Norte da Bahia

Abstract

This study investigates the sociolinguistic history of the northern backlands of Bahia, focusing on the Kariri language family and the effects of linguistic contact between these languages and Portuguese. The research is grounded in the premise that the backlands, often portrayed through a lens of scarcity, in fact constitute a territory rich in ethnic and linguistic diversity, marked by historical (re)existences. The imposition of Portuguese as the language of the Crown, throughout the colonial process, did not occur in a vacuum, but rather through encounters with the “languages of the cocar.” Drawing on the metaphors of the “languages of the cocar” and the “leather hat,” the study seeks to understand how Indigenous languages were silenced, transformed, or integrated into the Portuguese disseminated throughout the northern backlands of Bahia. Instead of undertaking a structural investigation, it focuses on the expressive traces resulting from this linguistic contact. The methodology brings together the foundations of Historical Sociolinguistics—which relates linguistic change to historical and social contexts—and insights from Ethnolinguistics, which examines the relationships among language, culture, and Indigenous cosmologies. The study adopts a qualitative approach, relying on bibliographic research and the analysis of historical and linguistic data concerning the Kariri presence in the region. Among its objectives is the mapping of Kariri-based linguistic vestiges in the Portuguese spoken in Bahia’s northern backlands, reaffirming the region’s multilingual character and confronting cultural homogenization narratives. By challenging hegemonic political-ideological representations that depict the backlands as monolithic spaces disconnected from Indigenous presence, the study broadens the debate on the persistence and vitality of Indigenous languages in the Northeast, with an emphasis on northern Bahia. In doing so, it recognizes that the northern backlands of Bahia are historically shaped by Indigenous presence, whose sociolinguistic experiences—far from extinguished—continue to inform regional identities and linguistic practices, resisting hegemonic discourses of erasure and cultural uniformity.