Duet poetry in Libras and Portuguese: co-construction of an integrated performance

This study investigates the linguistic possibilities for creating a poetic duet performed in Libras and Portuguese as well as how the signed and spoken elements produced by the two artists interact to create poetic effects. To that end, we ask how much information (i.e., how many units of meaning) can be expressed simultaneously in a Libras-Portuguese poetic duet compared to a poem produced by one person or a duet produced in just one language. We build on existing studies of sign language literature (Sutton-Spence, 2005) and simultaneity in sign languages (Napoli & Sutton-Spence, 2010) to investigate the structure of a bilingual-bimodal poetic duet (Libras-Portuguese) by Leo Castilho and André Rosa. Having transcribed our data using the Elan annotation software, we used close reading (Dubois, 2003; Durão, 2020) to describe the duet’s characteristics and recorded the process in a research diary. Thus, we describe the way the poets work together in their performance and the moments of individual expression that complement each other. Our analysis highlights the linguistic and aesthetic possibilities for the poem that arise from the fact that the creative phenomenon is a duet.

Keywords:
Sign language literature ; duets in Libras ; bilingual-bimodal duets ; simultaneity in sign language