DEAF INDIVIDUALS USERS OF SIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING PORTUGUESE: THE ANALYSIS OF PRACTICAL CLASSES

This essay shows the report of a series of searches that deal the acquisition of a first and a second language by deaf children, in inclusive contexts. Due to hearing deprivation, and for not having a whole acoustic duct, deaf people end up not acquiring naturally the language that is common for Brazilians in general. Among the searches carried out, those that deal the written expression of deaf undergraduates, whose path in the acquisition of the language(s) did not follow the model prescribed by current theoreticians. The search shows that the analyzed students did not acquire sign language as first language in the first phase of childhood and Portuguese as second language, contradicting the bilingual model adopted in Brazil

Deafness like a communicative difference

Thinking from a theoretical perspective, this paper discusses the deafness as communicative difference, starting from the notion of culture articulated by Cultural Studies and Foucault’s conception of discourse as social practice. The study shows that the difference between deaf and non-deaf is in language, communication plan and the means of exchanging dialogue, marked by oral-auditive and visual-space communicative channels, contrasting majority deafness representations that appoint arguments based on nature, biological and linguistic terms. Such representations have the effect of the search for the erasure and correction the other, regarded as deviant and abnormal.