"Meteu essa, Cazé?": An idiomatic construction popularized in discursive practices on the internet

Abstract

This study aims to characterize an innovative idiomatic construction of Brazilian Portuguese, Meter X, which has recently been popularized in discursive practices on the internet. Such popularization is due to the current success of the live streams done by a young streamer named Casimiro, who often uses the most prototypical realization of this construction, i.e., the expression “meteu essa.” This study is based on Usage-Based Functional Linguistics and Construction Grammar and the tokens analyzed were collected on the social network Twitter. In the analysis, the construction Meter X is described in terms of the properties of schematicity, productivity, and compositionality. The outcomes suggest that Meter X is fully opaque, partially specified and partially productive. Three types were sanctioned by Meter X: Meter SN, Meter X Ditransitiva, and Meter essa.