Sociolinguistic variation in Portuguese written by deaf people

Abstract

A great deal of deaf people can communicate through natural sign languages - in Brazil, Libras (Língua Brasileira de Sinais). Some of those, also write in Portuguese, situation described as "bimodal bilingualism" (Lillo-Martin, Quadros, & Pichler, 2016), that is, written Portuguese is seen as a second language. There are many works on deaf bilingualism in Brazil (e.g. Brochado, 2003; Cavalcanti & Silva, 2007; Fernandes, 2010; Goes, 2012; Lodi et al., 2015; Pereira, 2014; Skliar, 1999) and some of them even reveal features of this interlanguage (e.g. Brochado, 2003). However, there has not yet been an investigation on the variation that occurs in that form of Portuguese and, in consequence, neither has there a study on the correlation between variable linguistic uses and social factors or other linguistic factors. Thus, the aim of this research is to describe some variable features in the Portuguese written by deaf people, following, theoretically and methodologically, in the footsteps of quantitative variations sociolinguists. Qualitative analysis in the first phase of the Project will pick up 3 or 4 variables to be studied. Such variables will be thoroughly examined in phase 2 of the project. The contribution expected through the results to be found is twofold: a) assistance in the development of new teaching methods when it comes to Portuguese to deaf people, focusing on the real difficulties they face, since this research will provide empirical evidence on that; and b) in making the possible readers of the deafs' texts aware of the way they write, diminishing prejudice against them caused by a wrong view of their writing as a reflex of cognitive issues. (AU)