Tensive Proxemics in the Process of Identifying the Deaf Subject through the Analysis of a Visual Vernacular Poem

ABSTRACT

In this study, we take as our object the tense structure of discourses expressed in Brazilian Sign Language. We aim to demonstrate how the process of identification of deaf subjects is discursivized and textualized in the video-poem V&V by Fernanda Machado (2017). Based on Greimas (1973), Floch (1985), and Zilberberg (2011), we analyzed the content plane and the expression plane of the poem, with a view to deducing abstract categories that predicate narrative, thematic and figurative paths on the content plane, as well as figures of expression which, when homologated with each other, establish semisymbolic structures of a tensive order on both planes of language. The results allow us to assume what we have called, based on terminology borrowed from Hall (1977), the tensive proxemics of the deaf subject’s identification process. On the level of expression, such tensive proxemics consists of a path that starts with public recognition and moves on to social, personal and, finally, intimate recognition between the deaf subject-actants. On the level of content, such recognition is compatible with the category of adherence vs. inherence to a deaf identity.

Keywords: deaf identities; semiotics; identification process