Teaching languages to deaf students in Brazil at the intersection of discourses

Abstract

This work aims to discuss multilingual issues involving teaching languages to the deaf in Brazilian schools. For this purpose, it proposes an analysis of a set of materials produced by the Brazilian Ministry of Education aimed at situating means through which to act, represent and identify the deaf, as well as practices of teaching Brazilian Sign Language and Portuguese to this social group, based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework. Investigating discursive practices on this issue is important, as it allows one to identify the changes in the maintenance/transformation of recognition issues regarding the deaf in the Brazilian context. This analysis illustrates a multiplicity of voices that work to establish controversy upon evoking different meanings and a power struggle regarding the preservation of rules that currently guide the processes of language teaching for the deaf in an inclusive perspective.

Keywords

• Language Teaching
• Deaf
• Critical Discourse Analysis