A construção de sentidos por Indicadores Não Manuais em Língua Brasileira de Sinais (LIBRAS): um estudo baseado em frames

Abstract

The expressiveness of people who communicate through sign languages is usually something that draws a lot of attention. In this regard, it was the interest in investigating the influence of movements made by the human body (face expression, gaze direction, movement of the shoulders, head, torso and the like) that are not related to the hands which conducted this study, which has as objective verifying how and to what extent these non-manual indicators contribute to the meaning construction in Libras. We chose a sign of Libras (as it does not have an exact equivalence in Portuguese, it was demonstrated by images in the introduction) and we examined its use in three videos, available on YouTube, with dialogues of signaling, deaf and hearing people. Supported by the ecological-cognitive approach of language (DUQUE, 2017) and anchored in the framework theory (FILLMORE, 1982; DUQUE 2015), language games (WITTGENSTEIN, 1953, 2012; DUQUE, 2016) we found that it is the non-manual indicators that will lead to dialogue, making those involved share the same language games, serving as a trigger for activating the frames. The main evidence is the fact that it is these indicators that will bring the information that is essential for understanding an utterance, but that was not explicit through the manual components.