A VARIAÇÃO QUEROLÓGICA E LEXICAL DA LIBRAS EM FORTALEZA E MACEIÓ: ESTUDO SOBRE ASPECTOS INTRA E EXTRALINGUÍSTICOS
Brazilian Sign Language. Kerology. Linguistic variation. Sociolinguistics
The Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), as a living and pulsating language, carries with each meeting of the deaf the existence of the particular experiences of their localities. The occurrences of variation in the signs of Libras occur at several levels, making the development of research in the area a necessity. Thus, the justification for this investigation lies in the need to identify and describe the occurrences of variation in Libras, since this type of study can further enrich the understanding of the multiplicity of signs of this language, which is the majority among Brazilian deaf people. We were specifically interested, as a general objective, to analyze the kerological and lexical variations that occurred in 14 signs taken from the linguistic corpus contained in the databases of the REDE SURDOS projects, from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), and LIBRAS NA UFAL, from the Federal University de Alagoas (UFAL), institutions in the Northeast region of Brazil linked to the Corpus Libras/UFSC Project, which is building a National Inventory of the Brazilian Sign Language (INDL).We are based on the Variationist Sociolinguistics of William Labov (2008), dialoguing with other authors in the area such as Coelho, Souza and Görski (2015), Bagno (2017), among others. Discussions about Libras are supported by classics in the area such as Ferreira Brito (1995) and Quadros and Karnopp (2004), and researchers such as Castro Jr (2011), Mendonça (2012), Machado (2016). As it is a quantitative and descriptive research, the methodological assumptions are based on Corpus Linguistics (ZAVAGLIA, 2004; KNIGHT, 2011), which include the documentation of linguistic data, their description and data recovery for linguistic analysis purposes. The analysis focuses on the linguistic and extralinguistic factors of variation in Libras, with the objective of verifying three defined variables: gender (men and women), age group (young, adults and elderly people), region (Fortaleza and Maceió). The results showed occurrences of internal and external variations to the investigated groups, configuring the presence of variants and idiolects, in addition to the influence of sociolects in the studied signs. This research tries to contribute to the knowledge about Libras, being able to serve as a basis for the development of other researches in the area.