The Writing of deaf subjects: an investigation of authorship

Abstract This article aims to track authorship cues in texts written and produced by deaf individuals in workshop situations. To do so, textual production work in Portuguese was proposed by means of the collective rewriting of an adventure story, by confabulations between deaf pairs and listening educators, using Libras as the language of interlocution. Adopting a Bakhtinian conception of language as a discursive activity, the workshops became a place of development possibilities for the deaf individuals as a user of written Portuguese, as well as being unique manifestations of linguistic expression. Thus, the rewriting, as a production activity based on an already read text (in which the deaf narrated in Libras for other deaf people to record in written Portuguese), gave the participants the opportunity to put into play the knowledge constructed from reading, comparing, contrasting, transforming, and experimenting with new modes of construction that singled out their writing.