Brain, language and cognitive functioning in the social-historical-cultural approach: inferences from the study of aphasia

Abstract

This article aims to present and discuss, critically: (i) the theoretical principles of socio-historical-cultural approaches which guide the academic research in the field of enunciative-discursive Neurolinguistics, mobilizing with the main postulates of Vygotsky and Luria, concerning the brain functioning, as well as the reflections carried out by Coudry, Franchi and Novaes-Pinto, related to the conception of language and its functioning; (ii) methodological questions related to the qualitative researches of aphasiological phenomena, guided by the works of Freitas, Damico et al., among others; and, finally, (iii) how case studies and qualitative analysis contribute to the research in the field of Neurolinguistics, in order to understand aspects of cognitive functioning and the relation between brain and language.