What if I was d/Deaf? Would I be bilingual? Portuguese Sign Language deaf educators’ and Special education teachers’ vision about how to teach Portuguese Sign Language and Portuguese language

Abstract

What if I was d/Deaf? it’s a mental space built on the Cognitive Linguistic context which allows a look over the condition of being a deaf and how the categorization of the world is processed by the d/Deaf. Based on the socio-anthropologic and clinic-therapeutic’s paradigms we propose a visit to the d/Deafs’ education. We describe the urgency of a d/Deaf education that promotes the bilingualism anchored in two languages’ mastery: the Portuguese Sign Language (PSL) and the Portuguese Language (PL) in the written modality. Supported in neurosciences’ evidences, we intend that this education turns the d/Deaf student able to the emergent literacy, since the natural access to the PSL comes later than the access to the PL. What if I was d/Deaf would I be a bilingual? proposes the emancipation of the d/Deafs’ education, to which we think that also Language’s Teachers are determinant vectors in the promotion of the education, aiming the diversity. We found out that 74% of these professionals don’t recognize this idiom, making the d/Deaf almost invisible. From the 26% who knows the PSL, 56% consider this language as universal, no matter the existence of gesture languages formally recognized. What if I was d/Deaf would I be a bilingual? comes from the answers of PSL’s d/Deaf Educators/Teachers and Special Education Teachers to an interview: two different ways of conceptualizing the deafness and the evidence of being d/Deaf starting in the d/Deaf’s community and in the hearing’s community. If I was d/Deaf I would be a being in construction, a blending space, in which the PSL builds the world in a different way PL does. We underlined, in this assignment, what d/Deaf Educators/Teachers of PSL and Special Education Teachers consider being the meaning of teaching the PSL and PL to d/Deafs and listeners.