Linguagem e autismo: a multimodalidade no contexto escolar

Abstract

The aim of this research was to analyze the use of multimodal resources by the autistic child in scenes of joint attention occurred in a school context, considering limitations as communicative, learning and social interaction aspects. The theoretical basis of this work required the resumption of specific literature on autism, from the classic studies of Kanner (1943) to the assessment of the diagnosis presented in DSM-5 (2013), as well as the conceptions formulated by Bruner (1975, 1983) and Tomasello (2003) on joint attention, and the construction of the notion of multimodality, based on the studies made by Kendon (1982) and McNeill (1985), which also base the investigation. Methodologically, it was necessary to carry out a case study in which a 5-year-old male child with a diagnosis of autism was observed for a period of 4 months within the interactions established in the school context, either in the classroom or outside, thus constituting a corpus of approximately 3 hours and 50 minutes duration which was composed of 13 sections of data collection. After the collection, the data were transcribed and analyzed by the researcher through ELAN software. Through the observation and analysis of the interactive scenes involving the autistic child, it was found that although the child did not have the ability to communicate verbally, the child used the multimodality to establish communication with his / her partners. The multimodal resources such as gaze and gestures become here the main means of communication for the child, fundamental for initiating and maintaining interactions.