Diatopic Variation of Brazilian Soccer Phraseologisms Open the Score and Home Team

Abstract

The present paper aims at describing and mapping the diatopic variation found in the pairs of phraseologisms of Brazilian soccer — abrir o placar (open the score) e time da casa (home team). The theoretical framework adopted is limited to the French school of phraseological studies based on Mejri (1997, 2009, 2012), who points out basic properties of recognition of these structures: polylexicality, fixity, congruence, frequency, predictability and idiomaticity. Regarding the phenomenon of diatopic variation, we adopt the conception of Coseriu (1980), Chambers and Trudgill (1980), as well as Razky and Guedes (2015) regarding the issue of linguistic grouping, in addition to Corpas Pastor (1996) and Garcia-Page (2008) in the treatment of phraseological variation. The sample considered includes soccer written texts published in the period from 2008 to 2015 and extracted from the column Caderno de Esportes of five Brazilian electronic newspapers. The results show two variants for time de casa and six for abrir o placar. The analysis points to a diatopic configuration of the selected phraseologisms with a characteristic use of figurative language.