Abstract

This article presents the result of research developed with the language of elderly residents at the Long Term Care Facility for the Elderly - ILPI in Vit ria da Conquista Bahia Brazil In response to the initial questions as to whether institutionalization affects the language of the elderly whether the re-signification of verbal by non-verbal speech occurs and whether silence as language is part of an alternative system of possible meaning for the elderly it was perceived that language in institutionalized long-lived individuals it reveals that in response to diversified processes of silencing they have instituted silence as a possibility of reframing and structuring of meaning We collected data through the filming and recording of the elderly in enunciative-discursive situations considering the uniqueness of each subject s history and their respective crossings as well as the condition of production of the narratives based on the concept of datafinding by Maria HadlerCoudry 1 aligned with notions relevant to Linguistics in the theoretical-methodological perspective of Discursive Neurolinguistics The work presents a major finding regarding silence as a language anchored in multidisciplinary concepts of Music Philosophy Psychoanalysis Discourse Analysis and Linguistics relevant to this work that deals with the value of silence it is not zero emptiness which leads us to interpret it as meaning Thus the silence permeating each sign expands and gives meaning it becomes the possible resource for the institutionalized subject re to elaborate desires and responses