Perfis linguísticos de surdos bilíngues do par Libras-português

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the linguistic profiles of bilingual deaf people of the Libras-Portuguese pair, especially the language dominance profiles, and evaluated whether the complementarity principle (GROSJEAN, 2008) applies to the bilingualism of deaf people. This is a type of bilingualism of minority in which two languages of different modalities are used (a visual-spatial language and an oral-auditory language), presenting similarities and differences in comparison to the bilingualism of spoken languages. One of these differences concerns the complexity of usage patterns and language proficiency (GROSJEAN, 2008). The present research is based on an understanding of bilingualism in which not only proficiency levels are considered, but also issues related to the preferences and the usage patterns of the languages (GROSJEAN, 1998, 2008, 2013; LUK; BIALYSTOK, 2013). In addition, linguistic dominance is conceived as a global and multifaceted construct, informed by factors related to linguistic knowledge, processing, and attitudinal aspects (BIRDSONG, 2014; GERTKEN et al. 2014; TREFFERS-DALLER; KORYBSKI, 2016). Moreover, numerous studies on the bilingualism of the deaf are explored (BOUDREAULT; MAYBERRY, 2006; GROSJEAN, 1992, 2008; PLAZA-PUST, 2012, 2014; QUADROS; CRUZ, 2011, among others). Two research stages were developed: (i) initially, interviews were conducted with 14 deaf subjects, in order to probe and describe, in an exploratory way, aspects related to the profiles of these bilinguals; (ii) afterwards, the Language Questionnaire for Deaf Bilinguals was developed and administered, and an analysis was made with the data from 100 respondents. Most of the participants are pre-lingual deaf people, with profound or severe deafness, who have hearing parents and have acquired Libras belatedly. The majority of them declared great Libras usage skills, assigning themselves grades 9-10 for their ability in signing and understanding of it. In relation to the self-declared skills in Portuguese, there is more variation in the marks among the 4 skills, since the participants gave themselves better marks in the written modality (reading and writing) than in the oral modality (speaking and lip reading). With regard to linguistic uses, we identified usage patterns in which Libras and Portuguese are distributed in different domains, as well as an expressive number of reports of simultaneous use of signs and speech and use of 10 various strategies to support communication, which together compose a description of highly complex usage patterns. It can be said that the complementarity principle applies to the bilingualism of deaf people, but there are some specificities to be considered: (i) the impact of language usage patterns on linguistic proficiency is different for the deaf, given that certain skills in oral language may never be fully developed; (ii) there are restrictions to the possibilities of using the modalities involved signaled or written Libras and oral or written Portuguese; (iii) the massive use of code blending. The results also point out different profiles of language dominance among deaf people, and although there are more participants who are dominant in Libras, there is a considerable variation among deaf people, with different levels of global dominance in both languages.