A variação querológica e lexical da Libras: estudo comparativo sobre aspectos extralinguísticos em Fortaleza e Maceió

Abstract

The Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), as a living and pulsating language, brings to each meeting of the deaf the existence of the particular experiences of their localities. Occurrences of variation in Libras signs occur at different levels, making the development of research in the area a necessity. Thus, the justification for this investigation lies in the need to identify and describe the occurrences of variation in Libras, since this type of study can further enrich the understanding of the multiplicity of signals in this language, which is the majority among Brazilian deaf people. Our general objective was to analyze the kerological, lexical and regional variations that occurred in 14 signs taken from the linguistic corpora of the National Inventory of the Brazilian Sign Language (INDL), constituted in the Northeast by the Projects: Rede Surdos/ UFC and Libras at UFAL/UFAL, institutions from this region of Brazil linked to the Corpus Libras/UFSC Project, which created the inventory. We base ourselves on the Variationist Sociolinguistics of William Labov (2008), dialoguing with other authors in the area such as Coelho, Souza and Görski (2015), Bagno (2017), among others. Discussions on Libras are supported by classics in the areas such as Ferreira Brito (1995) and Quadros and Karnopp (2004), and researchers such as Castro Jr (2011 and 2014), Mendonça (2012), Machado (2016). As it constitutes a quantitative and descriptive research, the methodological assumptions are based on Corpus Linguistics (ZAVAGLIA, 2004; KNIGHT, 2011), which include the documentation of linguistic data, their description and recovery for the purpose of linguistic analysis. The analysis focused on the linguistic and extralinguistic factors of Libras variation based on three defined variables: biological gender (male and female), age group (young, adult and elderly) and region (Fortaleza and Maceió). The results showed occurrences of variations in the investigated groups when the vocabularies of deaf and deaf young people, adults and elderly people, living in Fortaleza (Ceará) and Maceió (Alagoas) were verified, with the presence of generational variations (diachronic) being configured by the identification of variants between generations; social (diastratic) variations, mainly identified in the group of men and, even more, in the group of elderly men and; geographic variations (diatopic), with occurrences that present the singularities of lexical construction in each region. This research tries to contribute with the knowledge about Libras, being able to serve as base for the development of other researches in the area.