ABSTRACT
This article focuses on both authors’ academic careers in the field of bi/multilingual education of the deaf, particularly highlighting the relevance of the professor, advisor and researcher Marilda Cavalcanti’s contributions and significant role in the reflections on sociolinguistically complex contexts constituted by linguistic or minoritized minorities. An overview of Cavalcanti’s theoretical production is presented, starting from her seminal article published in DELTA in 1999, and proceeding to her current output. The article emphasizes reflections, concepts and discussions proposed by Cavalcanti which have contributed to denaturalize representations of individuals belonging to minorities, such as the deaf; to de-essentialize the concept of language; and to question the myth of monolingualism, allowing the understanding of deaf people and deaf education from a post-structuralist and post-colonial theoretical approach. Finally, we emphasize the important kaleidoscopic perspective of language introduced by Cavalcanti and her proposition of a broader concept of educational linguistics based on inter-comprehension and translanguaging studies for teacher education.
Keywords:
language minorities; deaf; bi-multilingualisms; teacher education; a broad concept of educational linguistics.