Metáforas em Libras nas poesias produzidas por mulheres surdas

Abstract

Deaf people, like hearing people, also express figures of speech, but with a unique perspective that comes from artifacts from their own culture. Therefore, we can look at being deaf from a very specific sociocultural perspective, where the study can reveal relevant nuances in the authorship of metaphors by deaf women that have never before been scientifically recorded. In this sense, there was a need to explore the metaphors present in deaf literature, specifically in poetry produced by women, and their relationship with the literary aesthetic language in Libras in the construction of meaning for the deaf public, considering culture and language as a key to understanding signs and meanings. Therefore, having as theoretical support Lankof and Johnson (2002), theorists who support the metaphor theme in general, and Sutton-Spence (2021), theorist who bases the metaphor theme in Libras literature, the objective of the present research is to analyze the metaphors found in poetic works of Brazilian Deaf Literature by women to contribute to the understanding and appreciation of the representation of deaf women in the literary field. This macro-objective unfolds into the following specific objectives: Identify metaphors in Libras poetry created by deaf women. Categorize the types of metaphors in Libras produced by deaf poets; Describe the aesthetic elements chosen by the poets to compose the metaphors in the analyzed works; Analyze the construction of meaning in metaphors. The investigation took place on a sample of fifteen female poetic works published on YouTube and Instagram in the period between 2019 and 2023. In this sample, five poems used the figure of speech called metaphor. Two of these works are poems with a theme about the world of the deaf and three are about female empowerment. Regarding categorization, only one of the five metaphors was classified as an equivalent type and four as a different type. These four categorized as different, represent original metaphors of deaf culture, created by poets Yanna Porcino, Natália Mendes, Lyvia Cruz and Kilma Marques, presented in their poems that were presented at the 2nd Deaf Literature Visoliterary Exhibition. During the study, we presented the description of the context and the construction of meanings, through the aesthetic elements chosen by these four poets to compose these metaphors in their poetic works. Among the aesthetic resources of the literary language in Libras used by deaf poets in creating metaphors, we find: Classifiers, Anthropomorphism, Human incorporation, Repetition, Space and Non-manual expression.With regard to the meanings constructed through metaphors, the results were: The people who are on the margins of society and who demand space and a place to speak; Violence against women and feminicide; The multiple facets of women and society’s lack of empathy; And, the beauty in being empowered and full deaf. Upon concluding the study, we found that we fulfilled what had been proposed for this research, and we hope to contribute to future studies and further developments on this very relevant topic. Therefore, works of this nature expand the discussion of women's space in society, highlighting literature as a space of resistance for sign language, deaf culture and perpetuation of the history of the Deaf People.