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AILA Review, Volume 18

Applied Linguistics in Latin America, Edited by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2005

Introduction Kanavillil Rajagopalan	1-2
Articles
Dialogue and confrontation in Venezuelan political interaction Adriana Bolívar	3-17
Code switching and identity in the discourse of Catalan immigrants in Mexico Carmen Curcó	18-40
Critical thinking in reflective sessions and in online interactions Maria Antonieta Alba Celani and Heloisa Collins	41-57
Telling stories in two psychiatric interviews: A discussion on frame and narrative Branca Telles Ribeiro and Liliana Cabral Bastos	58-75
Language politics in Latin America Kanavillil Rajagopalan	76-93

Article Summaries

Dialogue and confrontation in Venezuelan political interaction

Adriana Bolivar, Universidad Central de Venezuela

This paper focuses on political change in Venezuela from a critical discourse analysis perspective that emphasizes the roles of the participants in the interaction to show how, with their actions, they are affected and affect others. An interactional approach based on Firth?s categories of context (Firth, 1951) and conversational analysis is used (Bolívar, 1986, 1994a, 1994b). The interaction is studied at a global level first in order to identify the actors responsible for political change in the social dynamics, and then particular events are examined in more detail. The aim is to describe how, in ongoing interaction, the political dialogue after 1998 moved from a formal democratic one to a violent confrontation between two major groups. The article focuses on political events before and after April 11th 2002, which marked a turning point in Venezuelan history. The corpus includes national newspapers, presidential speeches, the program Aló Presidente, slogans, graffiti, and insults recalled by women and men. The results show how verbal aggression and physical violence affect and weaken democratic dialogue and, consequently, the possibility of cooperation and understanding. The discussion highlights the need to strengthen critical language awareness in order to promote peace language rather than hate language.

Code switching and identity in the discourse of Catalan immigrants in Mexico

This paper analyzes patterns of code switching found in a small group of first and second generation Catalan immigrants in Mexico, and is part of a wider study on the impact of exile upon the construction of identity in the discourse of political immigrants in Latin America. With regard to the pragmatic exploitation of code switching, it argues that code switching is used by bilinguals even when a monolingual alternative is available, either because changing languages at a specific point in conversation reduces the processing effort involved in interpreting the stretch of discourse where the switch occurs, or because the shift of code adds cognitive effects to the overall interpretation of the message. The paper focuses on the effects of ad hoc concept construction, ? a well studied phenomenon in monolingual discourse ? on the presentation of self in bilingual discourse, analyzing cases when the pragmatically derived ad hoc concept involves a switch of codes. It is argued that this mechanism helps subjects represent themselves in bilingual conversation as distinct both from Mexicans and from non expatriate Catalans.

Critical thinking in reflective sessions and in online interactions

Maria Antonieta Alba Celani, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo Heloisa Collins

This paper focuses on online educational sessions of a continuing teacher education programme. The aim of this programme is to give a contribution to the continuing education of teachers of English as critical professionals, aware of discursive classroom practices, able to analyze them in the light of objectives to be reached and knowledge to be constructed. The paper gives a detailed account of how teachers deal with central issues in face to face reflective sessions and online interactive discussions and shows the results of a pilot intervention aiming at helping teachers develop more reflective and critical perspectives.

Telling stories in two psychiatric interviews: A discussion on frame and narrative

Branca Telles Ribeiro, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,
Liliana Cabral Bastos, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

This study investigates contextualization processes in two psychiatric interviews. Specifically, it analyses how different analytical tools ? frame and narrative ? work to clarify contextual embeddings and story bits. Frame analysis provides a way of looking at local and larger social contexts in talk. Specifically it provides a way of understanding ?what?s going on here?? (Goffman 1974). Narrativee analysis provides a way of understanding the relation of major topics and themes in an interview situation. Most of all, the unfolding of a key story has implications for understanding who the patient is and what experience she values most in that encounter.

Frame and narrative also work to evidence what makes these interactions such a complex speech event. From a frame perspective, context may present multiple and unexpected frame embeddings. In the development of a story, key organizational components (for example, an orientation section) may display fragmented information or be absent. Frame and narrative address different questions and may clarify different social and linguistic processes at play in the interview situation.

Language politics in Latin America

Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil

This paper is an attempt to take stock of the politics of language as it has been playing out in Latin America, ever since the countries in this region were colonized by European powers, mainly Spain and Portugal. Linguistic imperialism is by no means a new phenomenon in this part of the world. In more recent times, the relentless advance of English as the world?s leading lingua franca has only brought to light the difficult North?South relations that have underpinned the geopolitics of the region.

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Last Updated: 2008-06-23