Tecnologias digitais e estratégias comunicacionais de surdos: da vitalidade da língua de sinais à necessidade da língua escrita

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a discussion about the development and utilization of the Digital Technologies designed for deaf people. From the evolution of these resources, the social interaction between deaf and hearing people became viable, also providing equal appreciation of both languages: Sign Language and Oral Language. These technologies became a challenge to the deaf people, since it provides knowledge through written language, while favouring a faster communication, when enables the utilization of sign language. Would the interaction between digital supported writing produce new communication skills to deaf people, since they can be more independent with this kind of support? From this question, the influence of the technologies applied to the development of writting strategies to the oral language by deaf people and their relation with sign language was investigated. The research is based in the etnomethodology, guided by the assumptions of deaf culture, deaf identity and bilingualism, which instruments are: questionnaire, interviews and unsystematic accompaniment of deaf communities in some brazilian regions. Basically, it's main goal is to check some strategies currently used by deaf people in these digital technologies, in order to acquire new knowledges, in the communication and development of a second language, in their everyday activities. Therefore, it was possible to identify different communication strategies while using the written mode of the oral language and also the recurrent use of images and pictures, in order to understand new informations, working as a teaching device of these knowledges. Those findings suggests that learning a second language is easier and more successful when using visual elements, by linking the visual memory of the deaf learner, and that the immediate communication offered by the digital technologies, with a hybrid feature, grant the deaf person operating it a better understanding of the significants, in their sensorial expression.