Mosaico de identidades : construções discursivas de sujeitos surdos em uma comunidade na internet

Abstract

This research approaches the deaf identity theme, and it is inserted in the Postgraduate program of language studies. This theses aims to investigate, through the Facebook site community named “deaf people – dating relationship”, how deaf people build their own identities in social networks, analyzing their discursive utterances in order to deconstruct the dominant ideological discourse, based on pathological patterns, which focuses deaf people in the clinical and therapeutic dimensions of “cure” and ”normalization”. This paperwork is theoretically supported by Foucault (1997, 2001, 2010), Skliar (1998), Perlin (1998), Moura (2000), Hall (2000), Woodward (2000), Fairclough (2001, 2003), Sá (2002, 2006), among others. The question which directed this research is related to the way deaf people build their multiple deaf identities in a deaf community on the internet. To answer the referred question I selected posts in which these people enrolled themselves. The methodology is interpretatively based, in perspectives of Denzin e Lincoln (2006), Bortoni-Ricardo (2008) and Flick (2009). The results suggest an heterogeneous identity, plural and fragmented featured, in contradiction to the discourse of the homogeneous identity deaf people would have. One can conclude, therefore, that the relevance of this research is about contributing with the deaf identities discussion, in a perspective considering its heterogeneous feature. This emplacement is needed to realize and respect the individual and different ways of deaf people constituting themselves plural in society. However, there are many other silenced issues in these communities, which should be discussed to empower these people and ensure their rights.