Signs of the Time
Tracing the development and impact of LIBRAS
Existe uma versão deste artigo em português
Sign languages very likely pre-date the written record due to being efemeral, but that very fact meant that it risked existing at the cost of perpetuity and tradition [0]. To solve for that, the modern view says that gestural languages require a culture, a second generation and a community in order to develop fully. Brazilian Sign Language, otherwise know as Libras, was officialized in 2002 and currently has all three components, but it wasn’t always so. The story of how Libras came to exist goes all the way back to the early half of the 1800s.
In 1835, a congressman and Supreme Court judge from Bahia, Cornélio Ferreira, presented an ultimately unsuccessful bill that would have created the position of an elementary-level professor for deafblind and mute students in every province. Several years later, in 1841, an imperial law ordered the first asylum - the Hospício Dom Pedro II - to be built for housing of “mentally alienated” people due to the fact that intellectual disability at the time was considered a form of madness. In fact, anyone considered mentally or physically handicapped was prohibited from exercising any political rights by Brazil’s first constitution in 1824. That said, the doctors employed at the asylum, following its official opening in 1852, aimed to try to rehabilitate the patients. Statistics show that in 1856, during a moment of severe overcrowding of the asylum, there were 1,110 inmates for just 300 beds. Of the total, 508 were discharged, leaving 273 who were unable to be rehabilitated and 329 who passed away [2].
Located in Urca, the asylum offered occupational therapy to its non-violent patients, such as arts and crafts as well as artisanal trades, while violent patients were locked away with straight jackets (likely due to the rudimentary nature of the field of pharmacology at the time). For those with financial means, they could admit themselves and pay for accommodations with certain perks, such as a room without roommates [2].
Just three years after the asylum opened, in 1855, Dom Pedro II invited Ernest Huet, a French advocate for the deaf community who was also deaf himself, to come to Brazil. Huet presented the Emperor, whose own grandson reportedly had auditory problems, with a plan for a school to be built in Rio. Two years later Brazil’s first Institute for the Deaf - now called the National Institute of Deaf Education (INES) - was founded, where they used French Sign Language (or LSF) and mixed it with existing Brazilian signs to create Libras.
Of the subject matter initially taught at Huet’s school, none included the actual teaching of sign language, although there was a class on lip reading. However, one of the directors of the school for most of the latter half of the 1800s wrote two reports stating that sign language had actually started to be used. Below, one can take note of the general differences in curriculum at the Paris school vs the Brazilian one.
In the 19th century, deaf students, upon graduating, often paid it forward by becoming involved in the education of their fellow community members. What Ernest did in Brazil was similar to what American educator Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet did in the US some 50 years earlier, after having studied the pedogogical practices at the National Institute for Deaf Children of Paris. This French connection is the reason why American Sign Language (or ASL) and Libras are both based on LSF. Ernest, in fact, paid it forward more than once, as he only lasted for five years at the Brazilian school before going to Mexico City and repeating the process.
Deaf Education & Recognition of Libras
Prior to the 1700s, individuals who couldn’t hear or speak were thought to be unteachable and unable to formulate thoughts, much less have any kind of productive life. Such a viewpoint precedes the medical model of deafness which looks at ways to cure the “disability” and may have its roots partially in the fact that European explorers used hand signs to effect trade and communication with “primitive”Amerindians.
French educator Charles Michel de l'Épée spearheaded the development of LSF through the standardization of a proto-version of the language which was ultimately overly-complex and not very useful. Still, he started the world’s first free school for the deaf in 1760 and was able to attract crowds at many public demonstrations he held which proved that the deaf could, in fact, learn.
Two different approaches would eventually emerge, known as manualism (sign language) and oralism (lip reading, speech, and mimicry). For nearly a century, starting in the 1860s, the oralist approach was preferred by educators in most countries, with signing seen as something that segregated the deaf community from everyday life. The Congress of Milan in 1880 was a turning point for placing oralism as the clear winner. Even at INES there was a long period, lasting most of the 20th century, where the manualist method was either mostly or completely forbidden - albeit with some resistance:
Signs never disappeared from school, being made under the children's own clothes or under the school desks or even in spaces where there was no inspection [5]
Eventually a bilingual approach that uses both methods won out in the 1970s and 80s. Known as total communication, it led to Libras being legitimatized, albeit through lots of advocacy and social action by the deaf community.
Despite deaf education in Brazil having its origins in the colonial times, it was only with the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 that any type of legislation was codified into law to provide programs that attend to people with disabilities. The law included portadores de deficiência sensorial, or people with sensory disabilities, but didn’t make mention of Libras. It specified that those with disabilities must not be impeded by architectural obstacles (consider a building with no ramp for wheelchair users) which obviously doesn’t apply to the deaf community.
Three years later, Minas Gerais passed a law recognizing Libras in the state, which was two years ahead of congressman Sarney Filho’s proposed bill in 1993. The latter would have officially recognized Libras on a national level and provided means for those who use it to be properly accommodated when dealing with the federal government. In 1996, Senator Benedita da Silva took the reigns, inspired by the earlier proposal, and introduced another bill which eventually became federal law 10436 in 2002 [6].
Since then, Brazil has made progress in accessibility and education for the deaf, including recognition of Libras in curricula, the regulation of sign language translators/interpreters and the mandating of bilingual education.
Signing matures
Since the first book about Libras, titled Iconographia dos Signaes dos Surdos-Mudos (Iconography of Deaf-Mute Signs) was published in 1873 by a deaf student, sign language and, in this case, Libras itself has come into its own. While there’s an abundance of studies and available didactic material, it’s hard to pin down the number of deaf people in Brazil who use - or, need to use - Libras. In a 2019 study published by IBGE, Brazil’s statistics bureau, it states that around 22.4% of Brazilians with severe hearing problems, between ages 5 and 40, know how to use Libras. Of those who can’t hear at all, 35.8% know how to sign [7*]. These numbers are likely far from the “10 million users” figure that is often circulated online [8].
Equally as important as who uses it is knowing how it’s used. Sign languages don’t just operate on a horizontal plane between manualism and oralism. Aside from manual signs, there are other components such as facial expressions, body movements, spatial orientation, iconicity (signs that represent their meaning), temporal markers and even systems for writing sign languages.
Sign languages have other interesting features which deserve mention. One is word order. While Portuguese is SVO (subject-verb-object) oriented and thus linear, Libras is - as a spacial language - both SVO and SOV. Another feature, while not specific to signing, is topic-comment structure, where the main topic is given to orient the recipient, then that topic is commented on. And the third interesting feature is the use of a classifier predicate:
Classifier predicates (CLPs) in sign languages are verbal signs in which the movement of the hand expresses the movement or location of some object, while the handshape refers to some formal or semantic properties of this object. [9]
Lastly, there are ways of expressing sign languages on paper, ranging from Stokoe notation, to the Hamburg Notation System and SignWriting, among others. Developed in the 1970s by American dancer Valerie Sutton, SignWriting mainly uses visual representations of hand signs. In Brazil, it’s taught at the Federal University of Santa Catarina and used by the deaf community in São Paulo, as codified in the Brazilian Sign Language Dictionary [10]. In 2015, there was even a dissertation in Brazilian Sign Language, using SignWriting, accepted for a master's degree in linguistics [11].
Conclusion
With its more than 165 years of existence, it’s safe to say that INES is the reason - at least historically - that the deaf members of society in Brazil didn’t end up spending their entire lives in an asylum. The institute offered a way out and, eventually, a path forward. It’s no wonder why the national day for the deaf is celebrated on the same day as the founding of the institution - on September 26th. The government building is even protected patriomony and, today, houses many programs.
INES offers training in pedagogy for deaf and non-deaf professionals (including free language courses), audiological evaluations, early hearing loss detection, and caregiver guidance for the community. It also holds congresses, seminars, forums, and publishes research. For nearly a decade, starting in 2013, TV INES was a Brazilian TV channel with all kinds of content geared towards the deaf community.
In short, the history, legislation, and educational initiatives surrounding Brazilian sign language show just how challenging the path to recognition can be. It’s not merely a story of language development, but also of societal acceptance backed by governmental policy. Libras is a vital element of everyday communication for Brazil's deaf community, as well as a topic that deserves further study and appreciation.
Additional Notes
0 - Home sign
Sources
1 - Iconographia dos Signaes dos Surdos-Mudos
2 - Hospício de Pedro II - da construção à desconstrução
3 - Instituto de Surdos-Mudos: Relatório do Diretor
4 - L’institution nationale des sourds-muets de Paris
5 - Libras: A Língua de Sinais dos Surdos Brasileiros
6 - 20 anos do reconhecimento da LIBRAS: o que aconteceu na educação das pessoas surdas?
7 - Um em cada quatro idosos tinha algum tipo de deficiência em 2019
* While the infograph shows 35.8%, the text after the infograph states:
“Among this age group, of the people who reported a lot of difficulty or not being able to hear at all, 22.4% knew how to use Libras. Among people between 5 and 40 years old who could not hear at all, 61.3% knew this language.”
8 - O mito dos 10 milhões de surdos usuários de Libras
9 - Argument structure of classifier predicates in Russian Sign Language
10 - Brazilian Sign Language Dictionary
11 - A escrita de expressões não manuais gramaticais em sentenças da Libras pelo sistema SignWriting