ENTRE RUÍDOS E SENTIDOS: A PERDA AUDITIVA EM "ÁGUAS-VIVAS NÃO TÊM OUVIDOS"

BETWEEN NOISES AND MEANINGS: HEARING LOSS IN "ÁGUAS-VIVAS NÃO TÊM OUVIDOS"

Abstract

This paper proposes a semiotic reading of the novel Águas-vivas não têm ouvidos, by Adèle Rosenfeld, based on Greimassian semiotic theory, with the aim of investigating how the narrative constructs the experience of hearing loss within an aesthetic and identity-related dimension. Focusing on the trajectory of Louise, a deaf oral narrator-protagonist undergoing a progressive loss of hearing, the study examines the limits of language, perception, and meaning. For the analysis, it draws on the concepts of the generative trajectory of meaning (Barros, 2005; Fiorin, 2009) and its connections with sociosemiotics (Landowski, 2012). The study highlights how the novel’s language, by incorporating gaps, noises, and fragmentations, literarily recreates the experience of misunderstanding and communicative discontinuity, producing a semisymbolic effect. In this way, the work not only thematizes deafness but also transforms it into aesthetic material, presenting a poetic fabulation of the world in the absence of oral language. Thus, the research contributes to reflections on the relationships between language, identity, and contemporary literature.