Comparison between the weight of iconicity in orofacial reading by deaf people learning Libras and listeners during the pre-literacy phase

Abstract

This article discusses the topic of linguistic iconicity-arbitrariness (Saussure, 1916) concerning children during pre-literacy. Before explicit literacy instruction takes place, the child may wonder how to decode the grapheme-phoneme relationship and one of the hypotheses nurtured sometimes is iconic in character: there is a pairing between the size of the written word and the object it represents (PIAGET, 1962). Studies demonstrate that children from 3 to 9 months of age, during prespeech phase, are already able to understand many words and even pseudowords generated in a test environment and therefore not iconic (LIMA, 2009 (2006). However, for deaf individuals, who use LIBRAS as L1, which is admittedly a more iconic language, what default pairing strategies are used before formal instruction? This is the question that the present study seeks to answer. An experimental test was designed to verify the preference of deaf and listening participants in the correct pairing of one of two pseudo words to a lip movement video. The objective was to verify if iconic factors weigh more significantly for the deaf participants.

Keywords

• Arbitrariedade
• iconicidade
• pré-alfabetização
• leitura orofacial
• pareamento letra/som
• crianças surdas.