Fernanda Bossano
    Bossano Molina, Fernanda

    Comunidad Dis(lo)ca  Ecuador

     

    Oralidad Modernidad  Ecuador

     

    Socio cultural anthropologist. She has worked greatly with the Deaf in Quito, Ecuador. Their research has focused on the construction of community, language and identity among this population. They have recently been certified as an Ecuadorian Sign Language interpreter and are currently working towards the construction of Casa Flotante Diversa, a physical space for Deaf people in Babahoyo.

    Lecture

    Appropriation of the virtual space and creation of the linguistic landscape through Ecuadorian Sign Language

     

    In Ecuador, there is a lack of compliance with laws that guarantee the communication rights of disability groups. During the onset of the COVID-19 health emergency in 2020, the increased circulation of oral information in public and private media once again highlighted the inaccessibility of informative content for the deaf communities in Ecuador. This descriptive-analytical and synchronous research explores the Linguistic Landscape [LL] of a sign language, the Ecuadorian Sign Language [ESL]. The objective is to analyze how deaf communities take over the virtual space through the production of ESL in LL in emergency contexts, using linguistic and semiotic analysis. The virtual space of the deaf community was explored through the Facebook page of the National Federation of People of Ecuador [known in Spanish as FENASEC], from which a corpus of data was collected. The results show that the deaf community takes over the virtual space mainly using video format, which allows them to create and transmit messages in their language. In this way, they demonstrate their resistance to their limited information access by creating a communication and self-identification niche.