Geolinguistic studies in the Legal Amazon

challenges and contributions

Abstract

In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in the production of geolinguistic works that address the nine states that make up the Legal Amazon region. All these states present linguistic atlas, either completed or in the development phase, in addition to several other more specific works, focused on the dialectal description of cities or traditional communities, as presented by Romano (2014; 2020) and Sanches (2022). Despite this growing trend in Amazonian Geolinguistics, many of these works remain little publicized and without due publication. This study's general objective is to present and discuss the production of linguistic atlases in this territory, the challenges faced in this process and the contributions of these works to the description of the languages present in this broad political space. To achieve this objective, a survey was conducted among the authors of these works using an online form, aiming to promote discussions and expand dialogue in this field. It was observed that geolinguistic practice in the Amazon faces difficulties intrinsic to the reality of the territorial space, including long distances and difficulties in accessing communities, especially when river travel is necessary. Furthermore, there is a lack of funding to carry out this work, which makes the process more expensive for researchers. This lack of funding also impacts the subsequent publication of works, limiting access to theses or dissertations in university libraries.