Leitura e compreensão de expressões metafóricas em português como L2 por surdos sinalizadores

Abstract

This study aims at investigating how Libras-Portuguese bilingual Deaf people comprehend metaphorical expressions. More specifically, based on the Teory of Conceptual Metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999; 2003; Lakoff, 1987; Grady, 1997) and on the current discussion about the construction of metaphors in Sign Languages (Wilcox, 2001; 2004; 2005; Taub, 2001; Faria, 2003; Meir, 2006; Oliveira, 2011), this dissertation investigates how Deaf signers comprehend metaphors in Portuguese. Many studies have shown that metaphor comprehension may be affected by different factors, such as: context, conventionality and familiarity, the resemblance between the metaphors in L1 and in L2, the level of proficiency of the L2 user, and the experiential bases of the metaphor (Matlock and Heredia, 2002; Faria, 2003; Souza, 2003; Ferreira, 2007; Cielicka, 2010; Jacques, 2011; Ericksson, 2013; Taki e Soghady, 2013). In this sense, this dissertation presents two tasks that aim at verifying whether the interpretations of metaphorical constructions with correspondence in Portuguese and Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) are easier to process by Deaf people than those which are present only in Portuguese. In the quantitative task, the results were statistically significant. A second task was proposed, in order to analyze the possible interpretations made by Deaf people. The results of this qualitative task indicated that the participants did not have difficulties to explain the meaning of the metaphorical expressions that were correspondent in both languages. However, they provided different interpretations, while trying to understand the metaphorical expressions that are present only in Portuguese and that do not exist in Libras.