Levantamento das línguas de sinais indígenas já catalogadas no Brasil

Abstract

When considering the construction of intercultural dialogues, the culture and identity of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, we also need to consider the indigenous deaf and their sign language, which is of great importance for their growth inside and outside their community, both due to the historical possibility of being extinct with the disappearance of their signers or by the hegemonic stance of other national sign languages. This research has as its main theme the survey of indigenous sign languages ​​in the documentation process in Brazil through a bibliographic study based on official documents and studies carried out on these languages, specifically, document and content analysis, the research carried out presents characteristic of the methodology called “state of the art” or “state of knowledge”. Which were, at the time of carrying out this study, the indigenous sign languages ​​existing in Brazilian territory that caught my attention the most? One of the results observed was that indigenous sign languages, as well as oral indigenous languages, have a reduced number of users, in the case of signers, when compared to the number of national sign languages. The problem in providing “continuity” of the language is the lack of young signers. Furthermore, the lack of registration and documentation of these languages ​​is notorious, which contributes to their extinction. As a theoretical reference we have some researchers on the subject such as: Stokoe (1960) initially demonstrated the possibility of a signal being divided into three parts or phonological parameters. Subsequently, it was found that these parameters were five: hand configuration, movement, point of articulation or location, hand orientation and non-manual expressions. The status of natural language attributed to sign languages ​​is defended by other scholars also here in Brazil (cf. Brito, 2010, 1960; Quadros and Karnopp, 2004; Nascimento, 2009; Albuquerque and Xavier, 2022; among others), especially, with the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) as the focus of analysis. Barnabé (2021) also reports that, at the time the Portuguese landed in Brazil, more than 500 years ago, There were probably 5 million indigenous people belonging to around 1,500 ethnicities located in all regions of Brazilian territory. A theoretical research with a qualitative approach, of an explanatory nature, was carried out within the historical-social context through a bibliographical review using the contributions of the various authors who deal with the subject, through books, scientific articles published in different national and international journals. , theses and dissertations available in the online databases of national university libraries with a focus on the analysis of indigenous sign languages. For this work, we used as search criteria the indigenous sign languages ​​that have a greater number of signers, we excluded those that do not yet exist studies or cataloguing, in all research we found nine languages ​​of which we will bring information about the people, the culture, the locality and their sign language.