Colloquial Portuguese for English health tourists: a sociolinguistic investigation of a 19th-century Portuguese–English language guidebook

Abstract In an effort to provide English-speaking health tourists to Madeira with the linguistic tools to communicate with locals across the Portuguese mainland and islands, Rev. Alexander J. D. D’Orsey penned the guidebook Colloquial Portuguese; or, the Words and Phrases of Every-day Life in the mid-19th century. In our contribution, we investigate this book, a ‘vade-mecum’ in D’Orsey’s words, in its historical-sociolinguistic context. The guidebook contains commentary both on the relations between English visitors and Portuguese locals as well as a broad range of linguistic phenomena. These include, among others, what D’Orsey perceived as differences between mainland and island Portuguese, distinctions between ‘provincial’ and ‘more correct’ forms, what expressions to use with specific people, comments on loanwords and pronunciation, and a list of English-Portuguese translations on more general (e.g., ‘essential’ grammar) and more specialised words and phrases, such as medical terminology. Based on a combination of sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic analyses, our study reveals prescriptive attitudes typical of the Late Modern period, with speech acts listed in the book stratified according to prevalent social hierarchies. Overall, Colloquial Portuguese represents a specimen of a unique specialised register that needs to be investigated within its sociohistorical context.