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Abstract

This paper examines relations among dialogical processes and the constructión of subjectivity, focusing on the situation of the deaf and aspects of the social practices that affect their experiences in the educational context. Searching for indications of the meanings that deaf children elaborate about themselves, when they meet whit hearing and other deaf people, a case study was carried out in order to analyse the place of interlocutor that they occupy, or are allowed to occupy, in classroom interactions, in regular and special teaching settings. The study involved two pre-school subjects, who were acquisiring the Brazilian Sign Language and Portuguese. The analyses suggest that they tend towards signifying 'being deaf' as 'being incapable', an equiva-lence that a great extent, is due to a delayed process of constitu-tion as an interlocutor in signs and of identification with models in the deaf community. Such conditions are a result from the negligence of the socio-edu-cational projects in considering the linguistic and cultural pecu-liarities of the deaf