A comunicação suplementar e/ou alternativa: atividade semiótica promotora das interações entre professores e alunos com oralidade restrita

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze how teachers of persons with speech impairments conceive Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) and which views they have with respect to ways of interacting with their students. The theoretical framework is that AAC should be regarded as a semiotic activity, able to promote dialogical interactions, thereby facilitating language acquisition. The study is based on the approach of language according to Mikhail Bakhtin’s sociohistorical perspective. The hypothesis is that interactions between teachers and students with speech impairments and the utilization of AAC when based upon a dialogic approach of language favor the creation of spaces of interaction. An analysis of the scope of the AAC area was initially performed, historically looking at the prevailing conceptualization of language and at the academic output in AAC in the national educational context. The field study involved professionals who teach students with significant oral impairments in public educational facilities in a municipality with the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba. The sample comprises 27 subjects. Semistructured interviews were carried out in a public special school, in nine public primary schools and in three public centers for primary education. The interviews were evaluated according to a Bakhtin-based discourse analysis. Results showed that the dominant view of AAC (from literature survey, both nationally and internationally) is basically instrumental. It has been further verified that public measures towards teaching/learning processes of persons with speech impairments consider AAC as a tool for communication accessibility. The discourse analysis from the perspective of the teachers showed the instrumental view of AAC, which is considered as: tool of expression, communication and representation of thoughts and as an aid to learning and evaluation of syllabi. The interviews also showed that AAC is conceived as: graphic signals for conveying messages; as a language, as instrument of oralization; as having a signaling function. The same technicist and instrumental conceptualizations of AAC is verified when teachers take up a position where they do not relate to their students as speakers; when teachers claim that AAC is a technique that needs to be learned; when they limit their interactions with students due to physical impairments and disability-related characteristics. It has been verified that despite a prevailing purely instrumental view of AAC there is in international and national academic output as well as in the discourses of the participants indications of diverging views which consider AAC as signs, thus as having semiotic properties.