The enunciative perspective in the analysis of second-language late acquisition: contributions to be considered by the Speech Language Therapist

Abstract

This paper analyzed the reflections that an adult made about the late acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese as second language in speech therapy, from a enunciative approach, shifting to analyze the principles of inter-subjectivity, the form-sense relation respect and transversality of linguistic levels for language evaluation. The research subject was a speaker of Spanish as mother language, adult, psychologist and university professor, who was in speech therapy with the intention of improving his spoken Portuguese, and consented to participate. The data analyzed refer to an interview, developed and filmed by the speech therapist and later transcribed orthographically. We attempted to demonstrate, from the interview scenes, the action of the mentioned principles, as well as perform a reflection on the suffering that a subject in second language acquisition can go through not understanding and not being fully understood, the difficulty of insertion and social interaction arising from miscommunication. It showed that little attention has been given to the second language learner’s suffering, and emphasis was placed on the therapeutic position of the speech therapist as a professional that deals with the language of symptoms.