Giuseppe Antonelli, Giacomo Micheletti, Anna Stella Poli (a cura di)
Verso il museo multimediale della lingua italiana
DOI: 10.1401/9788815410283/c9

Marilza de Oliveira Content and Assembly of Estação da Luz Museum of Portuguese Language

Notizie Autori
Marilza de Oliveira è professoressa di Filologia e língua portuguesa presso la Universidade de São Paulo. I suoi interessi di ricerca vertono soprattutto su linguistica storica, sintassi, storia sociale e morfologia lessicale.
Abstract
When thinking about a language museum, three images immediately come to mind. The first recalls the cemetery game used by the character Oliveira, in Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch. The second resembles the character gallery in Thomas Mann’s The Buddenbrooks, whose dialects and accents map social, generational, and even temperamental distinctions. The third one refers to the heated debates in family life in Family Lexicon. The three dashed landscapes point to different perspectives for the construction of a language museum and can compose renewable modules to ensure the content is up to date. The cornerstone of the creation of the São Paulo Museum of Portuguese Language was laid by Jarbas Mantovani, director of the Roberto Marinho Foundation, who was looking for researchers on the history of the Portuguese language to implement the idea of building a museum dedicated to our language. The dialogue with the building’s architectural structure was reinforced using columns in which totems were placed and next to which were screens whose content referred to the linguistic and cultural contribution to the support of the Portuguese language in Brazil. The research work on linguistic loans was based on some semantic fields: fashion; food; fights and sport; ritualistic practices, games, dances and shows; architecture and housing; human relationships and behavior; economy, trade, and politics; technology. Considering language as mortar led us to three types of linguistic research for the museum: the first involved meaning extensions; the second dealt with the baggage we carry and the third with the history we have created. The visitor is led to understand that he is constantly operating with rules or schemes that are unconsciously acquired. Hopefully, he will gain confidence about his language ability with this exercise.
When thinking about a language museum, three images immediately come to mind. The first recalls the cemetery game used by the character Oliveira, in Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch. He would open the dictionary of the Real Academia Española and prepare a meaningless tongue twister with words that he created from the first consonant group in the sentence. And concluded that it was a true necropolis. The second resembles the character gallery in Thomas Mann’s The Buddenbrooks, whose dialects and accents map social, generational, and even temperamental distinctions. The vividness shows up in the reading of Christmas texts, in which the emphasis made the vowels change places. The third one refers to the heated debates in family life in Family Lexicon. Natalia Ginzburg evokes voices, puns and expressions that resurrect affective behaviors and reestablish family relationships loosened by time. In other words, the author forges the family unit through the lexicon used in the domestic environment which, every time it is celebrated by its members, has the power to reconnect them.
These three images show different dynamics of linguistic usage. On one hand, Cortázar explores the artistic potential of the word at the expense of an allegedly objective truth, and on the other, the oblivion of the relationship of words with the symbolic universe of signs, condemning them to the condition of a mere entry. Such formulation puts on the horizon the creative dynamic engendered by the word formation mechanism and the historical process of the generation of meanings perceived by the etymological examination. Thomas Mann put words in service of social relations and the different situations experienced by him, a warp that allows the manifestation of different linguistic varieties and different designs of speech levels. Language {p. 86}is understood not as a homogeneous, uniform, and integrated block, but as a heterogeneous one which is always in movement, showing ruptures amid persistence. Natalia Ginzburg’s text enters into intimacy and exposes the affectivity whose linguistic expressions shape family bonds. More than a community of practice in which the social meaning of linguistic variation is built within the development of an activity, here the sense of belonging is anchored by the lexicon and family voices translatable as cultural categories that are put into practice in a given context. Paraphrasing the rite of communion in which faith heartens the Church, these cultural categories incite the elements that hear and recall, over time, the echoes of their voices and make them feel part of this structure.
The three dashed landscapes point to different perspectives for the construction of a language museum and can compose renewable modules to ensure the content is up to date. The last of the three orientations, little explored by linguists, still deserves the investment of research to reach results that can be applied in multimedia museums. As for the first two orientations, the advance of linguistic studies carried out in the scope of dialectology, sociolinguistics, and linguistic description, under different theoretical perspectives, guarantees a vast supply of materials for museological purposes.
An example of the application of linguistic research to interactive activities in multimedia supports is the Estação da Luz Museum of Portuguese Language, located in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Designed to be totally dedicated to the Portuguese language, the museum was built from a minimum linguistic content that prevised the dialogue between language and society. It is worth noting that the project to build the Portuguese language museum was not originally proposed by linguists, but by the Roberto Marinho Foundation, which, with extensive experience in the television sector, develops projects in the areas of basic education, culture, heritage, and the environment. The linguists were contacted to develop the linguistic content which would be materialized in the museum, based on a {p. 87}program prepared by the foundation. Despite the fire that broke out in the museum in 2015, much of this material was saved and reused for its reconstruction, so this text is a memorialist account of a work produced more than 15 years ago and reflections on the result carried out after some visits to the museum. It is always good to remember that a remotely work review in time leads to a reorganization and rereading of data impossible to be carried out in the heat of the moment.
Having said that, I move on to my report that involves three aspects: 1) the first contacts with the Roberto Marinho Foundation, when the architectural plan of the building was presented, and the first ideas about the composition of the museum, conceived from a specific profile of the target audience; 2) the proposition and creation of linguistic content, its correlation with the architectural plan, the creation of interactive and other ludic activities, in addition to an immersion in the creative atmosphere of the language; 3) the proposition of content material to expand knowledge and some critical observations on the instrumentalization of linguistic research carried out for application in media supports.
The cornerstone of the creation of the São Paulo Museum of Portuguese Language was laid by Jarbas Mantovani, director of the Roberto Marinho Foundation, who was looking for researchers on the history of the Portuguese language to implement the idea of building a museum dedicated to our language. While having lunch at the University of São Paulo, he put forward to professor Ataliba Castilho and me the idea on building up a museum in the construction above the train station that connects São Paulo to country cities, crossing point of two subway lines, where more than 250 thousand people pass through daily. People from different social classes who denounce different ways of speaking the Portuguese language cross this station, which is an important arrival point for immigrants.
The initial idea was to attract this public that transits the train station, as well as groups of students, to the museum rooms and offer them a space for reflection on the {p. 88}language and provide them with the opportunity to recognize themselves not only as users, but also as producers of a cultural asset.
Considering that the main target audience would be people with a low educational standard who come to the city of São Paulo to carry out their work activities, building a language museum should provide for interactions that facilitate the understanding of the richness of the Portuguese language, the revelation of its structure and learning a little of its history. Borrowing the notion of linguistic knowledge developed by Chomsky [1986], the scope of this proposal was to create interactive modules that lead the speaker to recognize that he has mastered his own language and, with that, to create a strong affective component of identification of the speaker with its linguistic variants to pulverize linguistic prejudice and the feeling of not having control of the Portuguese language, aimed at encouraging its inclusive access. Based on these assumptions, our adherence to the Roberto Marinho Foundation project was immediate, as we understood, with Guimarães Rosa, that «language and life are one and the same. Anyone who does not make the language the mirror of his personality does not live» [Guimarães Rosa 1965].
In our first meeting we concluded that building the language museum in a train station has the power to establish an analogy with the linguistic and cultural diversity, and the main office in Brazil (especially in São Paulo) gives the Portuguese language the symbol of strength and power, considering that Brazilians currently make up the largest share of speakers of this language. And if, as Guimarães Rosa says, «language is the only door to infinity, but it is hidden under mountains of ash», we assume that the museum can provide instruments for removing the ashes and for creating empathy among Brazilians with the language they speak but they believe they don’t really know.
Indeed, the average Brazilian feels incapable of speaking the Portuguese language, as he does not master the grammatical rules due to a lack of education. Linguistic insecurity also affects educated people who tend to mismeasure their {p. 89}style. In this regard, the Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues begins the chronicle entitled Counselor Acácio’s lack of fear with a rough statement: «Brazilians were not born to be intelligent». Throughout the chronicle, he argues that «Brazilians don’t know how to be intelligent naturally» and that «The intelligent Brazilian is ashamed to say a modest, an honorable hello or a simple good morning» [Rodrigues 1993].
From this point of view, we can accept the idea that our language is covered with ashes and, therefore, it is necessary to chip away at the residues of grammatical and stylistic incineration to allow it to act as a mirror of the Brazilian personality. As language and life are one, it is up to us to understand and learn to accept the cultural diversity and plural nature of the Portuguese language. Within this perspective, it is essential to create the necessary conditions for Brazilians to value the language they speak and to introject the idea that they are fully competent in this matter: these are important steps for the enthusiasm to emerge in the process of expanding the linguistic repertoire.
The Estação da Luz Museum of Portuguese Language came to fulfill this role. The long lines of visitors, including student tours, to enter the museum have confirmed the success of the endeavor. Such success must be credited, mostly, to the multidisciplinary team and to the constant dialogue that took place between linguists and screenwriters responsible for translating linguistic research into an image suitable for the museum space. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the effort of linguists to undress theories to meet the museum’s needs, which, let’s face it, is not very easy. Hence, the dialogue with screenwriters and knowledge of the project was essential for the successful outcome of the work planned.
In the first two meetings, we received an extensive linguistic research program to be drawn up to compose the long-term exhibition on the second floor. The content encompassed three broad thematic issues: 1) the history of the language; 2) language as mortar; 3) language as a distinctive cultural sign. This work would be developed
{p. 90}from three observation points: 1) the large gallery whose side walls followed the design of the train platform; 2) the crosswords marked by the columns in the middle of the hall; 3) the alley of words in a residual space at the end of the gallery. Professor Ataliba Castilho was responsible for the history of the Portuguese language, and I was responsible for the other two subjects.