Uma análise cartográfica das pesquisas em inteligibilidade e compreensibilidade nas áreas de letras e linguística no Brasil

Abstract

The interest in researching speech perception and production is recent in historical terms, dating back to the period after the First World War , justified by the intense increase in communicational interaction between people from different countries, native and non-native speakers. In this sense and in a minority position, Abercrombie (1949) already reflected that communicational interaction should focus on “a comfortably intelligible pronunciation” instead of a production free of a foreign accent. Only after this interest in speech perception do studies on “intelligibility” and “comprehensibility” begin to be considered. According to Munro and Derwing (2015), both constructs must be understood in terms of listeners’ responses to L2 speech. Still, according to them, “intelligibility” is the “extent to which listeners’ perceptions match speakers’ intentions (actual understanding)” and “comprehensibility” is the degree of difficulty in the native speakers' perception of non-native speech. Therefore, this work aimed to carry out a cartographic analysis of Brazilian theses and dissertations resulting from research on the keywords “intelligibility” and/or “comprehensibility”, between the years 2013-2023, seeking to detail which major areas of knowledge most adopt the constructs in their studies, mapping the location and universities in which this research is concentrated. It is also intended to investigate the object of analysis of research in the area of “Languages, Linguistics and Arts”, analyzing which areas of concentration have the highest incidence. The development of this research also envisioned demonstrating possible intersections between the study of these constructs and other areas of knowledge. Data were collected from the CAPES Catalog, tabulated, and analyzed using bar graphs, density maps, and concentration percentage tables. Through the analysis of the data collected, there was an increase in the incidence of research from 2018 onwards and a more diffuse concentration of research on “comprehensibility” in relation to its major areas of knowledge, also demonstrating a great interest on the part of the Health Sciences area. In addition, it was possible to verify a greater density of research on oral intelligibility and/or comprehensibility in the South of the country , with a considerable number of studies on the general constructs in the Southeast, Northeast and South. Keywords: Intelligibility . Comprehensibility . Cartographic Analysis.