PEUL (Program for the Study of Language Use) is composed of a group of researchers whose main initial purpose is to investigate patterns of variation and change in Brazilian Portuguese as spoken in Rio de Janeiro (the "carioca" variety). At first, in the 1980's, only spoken language was studied. A new sample of the same community of speakers collected about 20 years later facilitated comparison of the behavior of the community (trend study) and the individuals (panel study). These studies gave rise to the analysis of linguistic change in real time. Recently, investigation of written language, focusing specifically on newspaper genres, has been undertaken. This expansion of both aims and corpora was motivated by comparison of principles correlated to variable phenomena in the modalities under investigation. It also allowed verification of hypotheses related to the migration of change-in-process from spoken to written language. In this article we intend to show how the analysis developed by members of the group has contributed to deepen several relevant theoretical points. The systematicity of principles underlying the variable use of distinct phenomena, the way linguistic change penetrates written genres, or is rejected by them, are some of the issues presented. The constant examination of new questions has expanded research to the interface with other areas of knowledge.
Sociolinguistics; Spoken language; Written language; Text genre; Applications