ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Deaf scenario and the situation involving Deaf education in Brazil. It presents the theoretical concepts used in the data analysis, focusing in particular on the following notions: representation, identities and communicative repertoire. Following a familiar pattern of Sign language representations worldwide, Libras was, for a long time, taken to be a mere set of improvised, unsystematic gestures. The use of Libras in educational contexts was discouraged or even banned. Since the 1960s, with the establishment of the linguistic status of American Sign Language, numerous studies of different Sign languages have been carried out all around the world, including Brazil. The chapter uses Rymes concept of communicative repertoire to account for the multiplicity of resources that are used in Deaf interactions. She focuses on the need to replace a monolithic view of language to be able to accommodate the complexity of speakers' communicative repertoires.
