“My language is Libras”: a critical analysis of deaf people’s discourses by their language recognition

• Autor(a) principal: Alves, Juliana Barbosa
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Pedrosa, Cleide Emília Faye
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Domínios de Lingu@gem
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/dominiosdelinguagem/article/view/69247
• topic: Análise Crítica do Discurso; Luta por Reconhecimento; Povo surdo; Narrativas do eu; Critical Discourse Analysis; Struggle for Recognition; Deaf people; Self narratives

This paper aims to analyze, based on narratives of deaf subjects, their discourse of fight for recognition of their language as unavoidable for their identity (re)affirmations. For this, we seek support in the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 2008; Wodak, 2004) which brings in one of its objectives the denunciation of power relations suffered by subordinate groups; in the Sociological and Communicational Approach to Discourse (ASCD) (Pedrosa, 2012); in Deaf Studies (Perlin, 2016), in order to understand the cultural and social history of the deaf people; and in the theory of Social Philosophy, focusing on the Struggle for Recognition (HONNETH, 2009). Linguistic analyzes will be influenced by spectrums of the categories of the evaluative system proposed by Martin and White (2005), when developing the language of evaluation within the scope of Systemic-Functional Grammar (Halliday, 2004). The corpus generation are narratives of the self of deaf students of the Libras (Língua Brasileira de Sinais) Language course at Federal University of Sergipe (UFS). We used the qualitative-interpretative methodology (Magalhães; Martins; Resende, 2017) and followed the paths suggested by Pedrosa (2016) and Cunha (2021) for the ASCD. It was possible to verify that, through the narratives, the deaf subjects exposed their struggles for recognition in various spheres of life, and especially, for their language. With their positions of claiming and denouncing denied linguistic rights, these subjects were able to (re)affirm their sociocultural identities, showing themselves to be more aware of their rights.