Vendo vozes e ouvindo mãos: o que os sinais caseiros nos dizem sobre aquisição de linguagem ou da linguagem

Abstract

This thesis resides in the Language Acquisition studies and addresses the reality of Deaf people born into hearing families and without access to any sign language. With a descriptive-explanatory purpose, this work of basic nature aims, mainly, to describe how homesigns were inserted in the communicative process of deaf children with hearing relatives, considering: the level of understanding between interlocutors; the distinction between signs and gestures; along with the degree of iconicity concerning the gestural units. To do so, we turned to the theories of Erving Goffman (1974), David McNeill (1992, 2000), and Christian Cuxac (1993, 2003, 2010), as well as the studies of Susan Goldin-Meadow and colleagues (1975, 1998, 2003, 2021) and Ivani Souza-Fusellier (2004). The corpus comes from field research that began with a mapping process to identify deaf people in Vale do Juruá, in Acre. Then, interviews were conducted using an anamnesis form and usage of eliciting activities, such as the Spontaneous Naming Test, the ERT - Phonological Phonetic Exam (TEIXEIRA, 2006), and storytelling from a sequence of images, according to the works of Sallandre (2003) and Souza-Fusellier (2004). Four deaf people participated in this study, aged between nine (09.00) and twenty-four-year-old (24.00), three women and one man. ACN, TBE, JCA, and ESA, assigned by their initials, are severe/profound deaf, who live in places of difficult access, isolated more precisely, and have never had contact with any sign language, especially Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS). During the collection process, data were recorded in form (anamnesis) and video. The video data underwent several editions before being transcribed in ELAN (Eudico Linguistic Annotator) then converted into a sequence of images, which allowed identification and analysis of statements at linguistic levels, the distinction of gestures and signs, and greater understanding of iconicity. The results reveal that: 1) Deaf people and family members share a common lexicon, although listeners, in general, rely mostly on coverbal gestures; 2) Deaf people’s gestures are lexical units that arise as stable signs (names, processes, time markers, evaluations.), notes, transfers and calling gestures (conversation markers); 3) the sign is essentially iconic, without ceasing to be conventional and arbitrary. Ultimately, it is appropriate to state that homesigns are linguistic signs that act in Homesign Languages for Deaf people who, not having previous access to an institutionalized sign language, developed pari passu, their own instrument of interaction, through the linguistic-communicative space found within the family.