A variação linguística em foco: levantamento e análise de pesquisas acadêmico-científicas sobre a Libras

Abstract

The present work is a research that aims to investigate in virtual academic spaces, such as websites of specialized journals and funding agencies such as Capes and CNPQ, academic-scientific works that deal with variationist perspectives in structural elements of the grammar of the Brazilian Sign Language (Língua Brasileira de Sinais), língua Libras. In this sense, this paper is the result of a descriptive-analytical research that culminated in the analysis of a series of academic products that show the current research trends, based on the so-called Variationist Sociolinguistics, regarding structural elements of Libras that are in variation, according to the researched studies that exposed results that were mentioned and, therefore, interpreted throughout this paper text. Thus, through the proposed analysis some results are preliminary, in view of the initial nature of this survey: the analyzed texts follow the perspective of the so-called Labovian Variation Theory; There is not, among the texts studied, any “new” theoretical perspective with regard to analyzing the elements in variation; the authors highlighted the fact that the deaf communities are in constant sociocultural change; and, finally, it is highlighted that there is a total attempt to adapt the variationist studies of oral languages into sign languages, showing that there is still a strong tendency to consider analyzing Libras through theoretical perspectives that were constructed through data from spoken languages.