Uma investigação empírica sobre o processo de compreensão da metáfora com sujeitos Down: contribuições do Pensar Alto em Grupo

Abstract

This master's research, linked to the Postgraduate Program in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, is exploratory, bibliographical and qualitative interpretivist in nature. Its general objective is to investigate how subjects with Down Syndrome understand metaphor through a dialogical reading practice, Think Aloud in Group (Zanotto, 1988, 1995, 2014; Zanotto, 2018; Sugayama, 2016) - based on the epistemology of dialogism and interpretivism. The specific objectives were created based on the initial question: i) Can students understand metaphor or not as they take part in a conversation about reading literary texts? ii) How can this practice highlight the processes used by students during reading iii) How can the results of the research contribute to inclusive education? This work is part of the field of Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 2006; Pennycook, 1998). The study is based on the hypothesis that metaphors are an omnipresent phenomenon in human life, transcending in/through language, not just an extraordinary act, as traditional rhetoric presupposes, but also an ordinary act of human acting and thinking, predominantly revealing the affective-emotional dimension that "calibrates" teacher student; teacher-school; teacher-family interactions. Theories on the embryonic process of Down's Syndrome (Pueschel, 1993; Lima, 2012; Kozma, 2007) were used as a theoretical basis. From a discursive perspective, the research is anchored in the epistemology of dialogism (Bakhtin; Volóchinov 1979; Bakhtin, 2011. From a cognitive perspective, the research was based on classic and contemporary studies of Metaphor Concepts Theory (Lakoff; Johnson, 1980, 2002; Zanotto, 1995, 2014, 2018). In order to verify the plausibility of the hypothesis, the corpus of this study was made up of subjects with Down's Syndrome, who took part in the ALEGRIA extension project (Learning to Read and Write, Generating Respect, Inclusion and Autonomy) run by the PPG of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, located in Belo Horizonte, MG. Based on the analysis of the data, I sought to examine, in practice, how students with Down's Syndrome deal with and understand figurative language, for example metaphors, which is a pervasive phenomenon in human language and a structuring factor in everyday narratives. The data revealed that the dialogic reading practice researched provided a paradigm shift, as it is possible to deduce that subjects with Down's Syndrome are capable of understanding figurative language through collaborative construction. Finally, it was possible to attest that the PAG fosters the construction of transformative, democratic and inclusive teaching. However, as this is a first study, I must emphasize that more research is needed to investigate this phenomenon